Owner of a Lonely Heart: A Memoir

From the award-winning author of Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, a powerful memoir of a mother-daughter relationship fragmented by war and resettlement.At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her father, sister, grandmother, and uncles fled Saigon for America.

Beth’s mother stayed—or was left—behind, and they did not meet again until Beth was 19.

Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than 24 hours together.Owner of a Lonely Heart is a memoir about parenthood, absence, and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beth’s relationship with her mother.