Beth Nguyen reflects on her mother’s absence in ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’
Beth Nguyen was 8 months old when her father, uncles, and grandmother whisked her and her sister out of Saigon, Vietnam, the day before the city fell to the North Vietnamese army in 1975. After stops in three refugee camps, they eventually settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
In her new memoir, “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” Nguyen marvels that “so much of my life hearkens back to a time that I can’t remember and didn’t choose.” The powerful, searching narrative probes two momentous consequences of her quick exit from
