Run Me to Earth

(Hardback)

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From award-winning author Paul Yoon comes a beautiful, aching novel about three kids orphaned in 1960s Laosand how their destinies are entwined across decades, anointed by Hernan Diaz as, one of those rare novels that stays with us to become a standard with which we measure other books.

Alisak, Prany, and Noithree orphans united by devastating lossmust do what is necessary to survive the perilous landscape of 1960s Laos. When they take shelter in a bombed out field hospital, they meet Vang, a doctor dedicated to helping the wounded at all costs. Soon the teens are serving as motorcycle couriers, delicately navigating their bikes across the fields filled with unexploded bombs, beneath the indiscriminate barrage from the sky.

In a world where the landscape and the roads have turned into an ocean of bombs, we follow their grueling days of rescuing civilians and searching for medical supplies, until Vang secures their evacuation on the last helicopters leaving the country. Its a move with irrevocable consequencesand sets them on disparate and treacherous paths across the world.

Spanning decades and magically weaving together storylines laced with beauty and cruelty, Paul Yoon crafts a gorgeous story that is a breathtaking historical feat and a fierce study of the powers of hope, perseverance, and grace.

If you truly believe in the transformative power of literature then you must read this book.Run Me to Earthis a genuine masterpiece; fierce, tender, wise, earth-shattering, pulsating with love and hope.MIRIAM TOEWS, author ofWomen Talking

WithRun Me to Earth, Paul Yoon proves, yet again, that he is a master at finding depth of emotion in formal restraint and discovering the timeless core in the most urgent issues of our day. This is one of those rare novels that stays with us to become, over the years, a standard with which we measure other books.HERNAN DIAZ, author ofIn the Distance,finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

Reviews

Traversing countries and continents during a half-century, Yoons (The Mountain, 2017) second novel unfolds decades of unrelenting loss and meaningless brutality, balancedsomehowby exquisite kindness and unbreakable bonds...Yoon again exemplifies his unparalleled ability to create a quietly spectacular narrative that reveals the unfathomable worst and unwavering best of humanity; the result here provides mesmerizing gratification.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
WithRun Me to Earth, Paul Yoon proves, yet again, that he is a master at finding depth of emotion in formal restraint and discovering the timeless core in the most urgent issues of our day. This is one of those rare novels that stays with us to become, over the years, a standard with which we measure other books.
HERNAN DIAZ, author ofIn the Distance,finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
If you truly believe in the transformative power of literature then you must read this book.Run Me to Earthis a genuine masterpiece; fierce, tender, wise, earth-shattering, pulsating with love and hope.
MIRIAM TOEWS, author ofWomen Talking

Author Bio

Paul Yoon is the author of four previous works of fiction: Once the Shore, which was a New York Times Notable Book; Snow Hunters, which won the Young Lions Fiction Award; The Mountain, which was an NPR Best Book of the Year; and Run Me to Earth, which wasone of Timemagazines Must-Read Books of 2020 and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. A recipient of aGuggenheim Fellowship, he lives in the Hudson Valley, NewYork.