Jay Wurts Ordre des livres

In this haunting memoir of the Vietnam war, Le Ly Hayslip describes the experience of an innocent victim whose childhood was dominated by devastating violence and conflicts between the teachings of her culture and the realities of war. When U.S. helicopters landed in her village, Le Ly Hayslip was twelve years old. The youngest child in a close-knit Buddhist family, she survived rape, imprisonment and torture by South Vietnamese soldiers. Sentenced to death by the Viet Cong, she ultimately fled to the U.S. with her children, to find peace and "choose life." Nancy Kwan's reading tells of the author's reunion with family and homeland in 1986, painting a striking picture of a noble, optimistic woman.

It is said that in war heaven and earth change places not once, but many times. When Heaven and Earth Changed Places is the haunting memoir of a girl on the verge of womanhood in a world turned upside down. The youngest of six children in a close-knit Buddhist family, Le Ly Hayslip was twelve years old when U.S. helicopters landed in Ky La, her tiny village in central Vietnam. As the government and Viet Cong troops fought in and around Ky La, both sides recruited children as spies and saboteurs. Le Ly was one of those children. Before the age of sixteen, Le Ly had suffered near-starvation, imprisonment, torture, rape, and the deaths of beloved family members—but miraculously held fast to her faith in humanity. And almost twenty years after her escape to America, she was drawn inexorably back to the devastated country and family she left behind. Scenes of this joyous reunion are interwoven with the brutal war years, offering a poignant picture of Vietnam, then and now, and of a courageous woman who experienced the true horror of the Vietnam War—and survived to tell her unforgettable story.