Last plane to safety,
a far away address,
can she find her brother again?
A promised escape flight takes only Hang’s little brother as the Communists overrun their town, and the twelve year old escapes from Vietnam with Mother on a boat… journey of terror in 1975.
From refugee camp to Uncle’s home in Texas in 1981, another step nearer to the address where Linh was taken.
LeeRoy, all done with school and being a city fella, is heading up to the Panhandle to meet his favorite bronc rider and work in rodeos. Helping this teenage gal get to Amarillo won’t take much time, will it?
But the address is now a vacant lot! A neighbor’s information sends LeeRoy and Hang out toward Palo Duro Canyon to find her brother, now called David.
Hang is determined to speak English well enough to tell David every memory of their family, as she and LeeRoy work on the dusty ranch near David’s new home, trying to wrestle thorny mesquite trees from the rocky earth with her brother in his summer before sixth grade.
Amarillo means “yellow” but the dirt there is red and orange, not like the tropical green fruit trees and vines of Vietnam.
Hang is sad that David cannot recall their childhood together, Uncle wants to take David from the new mother who loves him, and LeeRoy isn’t sure whether to stay on the ranch or follow his rodeo dreams.
As refugees flee from danger and desperate situations, how can we help them?
**kmm
Book info: Butterfly Yellow / Thanhha Lai. Harper Collins Children’s Books, 2019. [author site] [publisher site] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.
