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 nineteen. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than twenty-four 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. Framed by a handful of visits over the course of many years--sometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, sometimes with her mother alone and sometimes with her sister--Beth tells a coming-of-age story that spans her own Midwestern childhood, her first meeting with her mother, and becoming a parent herself. Vivid and illuminating, Owner of a Lonely Heart is a deeply personal story of family, connection, and belonging: as a daughter, a mother, and as a Vietnamese refugee in America.

Author: Beth Nguyen
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Published: 07/04/2023
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.82lbs
Size: 8.68h x 5.83w x 0.95d
ISBN: 9781982196349


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 05/15/2023
Publishers Weekly 05/29/2023
Booklist 06/01/2023 pg. 21
Library Journal 06/01/2023 pg. 121