Description: On June 8, 1972, nine year old Kim Phuc, severely burned by napalm, ran from her burning village and into the eye of history. Her photograph, seen around the world, helped turn public opinion against the War and is one of a handful of images that remained branded in the memory of all who lived through the Vietnam years. This book is the story of how that photograph came to be -- but also, what happened to Kim Phuc after it was taken. It opens up to American readers an unknown world -- the world of Vietnam after the American army left. Kim becomes a pawn in the Communist regime's propaganda campaign, even as her own family fights a losing battle to support themselves in a physically and economically devastated country, now plagued with corruption. Kim's recovery and rehabilitation is long and arduous, and she is eventually sent first to the Soviet Union, then Germany, and finally Cuba, before defecting to Canada. Denise Chong has written one of the only detailed, humanistic accounts of everyday life in the wake of this war as well as a meditation on the aftermath of celebrity, and the power of an image.

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