Bich's family escapes Vietnam on a crowded ship as Saigon falls, with Bich only eight months old.

The family passes through a refugee camp in Guam before being granted entry into the United States.

Bich's family arrives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with $5 and a knapsack, sponsored by Mr. Heidenga.

At the Heidengas' house, Bich watches their daughter eat from a shiny red can of Pringles.

Bich's father meets a Mexican-American woman named Rosa at a New Year's Eve party and begins seeing her.

Bich's father and Rosa marry at the courthouse, and Rosa and her daughter Chrissy join the household.

Vinh is born two months after the wedding, and the family throws a large celebration party.

Bich becomes an obsessively good student in Mrs. Andersen's third-grade class, relentlessly pursuing gold star stickers.

Bich and Anh break into the Vander Wals' house and trash Jennifer's room while the family is on vacation.

Bich rebels against Rosa's cooking, going on strike and declaring that Rosa is not her real mother.

Bich steals a plum from the Buddha altar and realizes Buddha is not a god who punishes or rewards.

Bich's father steals all of her carefully saved holiday money and yells at her when confronted.

Rosa announces she and Bich's father are divorcing and takes the children out to eat at Sizzler.

A letter arrives from Bich's birth mother, and Bich and Anh write back but hear nothing for years.

Bich, Noi, and Chu Anh travel to Vietnam, and Bich realizes the homeland is not hers to remember.

Bich's family flees Saigon as it falls and makes their way through refugee camps to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where they arrive with almost nothing. Her father meets and marries Rosa, expanding the household with a stepsister and a new brother, Vinh, while the family slowly tries to put down roots. As Bich grows up she fights for belonging at school and with neighbors, culminating in a defiant break-in at the Vander Wals' house and a confrontation with Rosa over food and identity. A spiritual reckoning follows when she steals fruit from the Buddha altar and discovers what faith actually means to her. Her father's gambling and eventual divorce from Rosa mark the family's quiet unraveling, even as they continue living under the same roof. Bich's arc closes when she travels to Vietnam and confronts the truth that her homeland is not hers to reclaim.

The headline moments of Bich's journey from Vietnam to Grand Rapids and into adulthood.

On the escape ship, Noi slices the meager apple ration and gives every piece to the girls, keeping none for herself.

The family chooses Michigan over other options because Noi has a treasured symbolic connection to the University of Michigan.

Noi takes Bich and Anh to the farmer's market and places the purchased fruit before the Buddha statue for two days.

Bich and Anh learn English by watching television shows including Happy Days and Sesame Street.

Rosa notices the girls have incorrect birthdates on their records and organizes a birthday party for Anh.

Chu Cuong and Chu Dai take Bich and Anh for ice cream at the Dairy Cone multiple times a week all summer.

Holly and Bich bond over having the best cursive in class and are allowed to study together in the hallway.

Bich tags along with Anh to Tara's house for dinner and embarrasses herself by sitting in the father's chair and eating before grace.

Rosa keeps the children home during the teachers' strike and brings them to the picket line outside the school.

Bich joins Girl Scouts and spots Chrissy smoking with teenagers in a parking lot during a troop nature walk.

Bich's father discovers Ponderosa steakhouse and brings the family every week until the all-you-can-eat buffet loses its appeal.

Two foster brothers named Phuong and Vu, originally from Saigon, arrive and settle into the household.

Rosa announces the family is moving to a new house in Ada, and Bich's uncles move out to their own apartment.

Bich travels to Boston for a wedding and decides to meet her birth mother, discovering two half-siblings older than herself.

Bich and Anh send a box of baby clothes to their birth mother; Rosa later tells them the baby was lost.

From Noi's quiet sacrifice on the escape ship to the summer rituals of chasing ice cream trucks with her uncles, Bich's early life is built on small but resonant moments. Rosa integrates into the household through birthday parties and celebrations, while friendships at school with Holly introduce Bich to the lunches and home lives she envies. Rosa's political convictions take the children to picket lines, and Bich's stepsister Chrissy begins pulling away into a rebellious adolescence that Bich can only observe from the outside. Foster brothers from Vietnam and Saigon briefly expand and then shrink the household, while a move to Ada signals the end of childhood's familiar geography. Bich eventually edges toward her birth mother's world, traveling to meet her and discovering a family she never knew existed. The memoir's emotional coda arrives when Bich and Anh send their mother a box of baby clothes and receive devastating news in return.

The everyday moments, relationships, and family rituals that shaped Bich's childhood.

Noi's husband is tortured by Communists in Vietnam, and the family flees to Saigon, leaving Noi's siblings behind for forty years.

Bich's father faces armed guards on the way to the escape ship but keeps running, committing his family to departure.

Bich settles in Grand Rapids and feels a deep sense of 'missingness' living in an overwhelmingly white, conservative, and Christian city.

Chrissy joins the household and promptly introduces Bich and Anh to swear words they had never heard before.

Bich wins the class spelling bee and overhears Mrs. Andersen make a racist remark about a foreigner winning.

Jennifer gives Bich a birthday gift of paper folded into a cube that, when opened, reads 'God's Son.'

At Holly's dinner table, Bich attempts to use a knife and fork and accidentally sends her pork chop flying across the room.

When Holly asks about her mother, Bich says she stayed in Vietnam because she likes it there, knowing it is a lie.

At the school Tet assembly, a teacher stops the Vietnamese girls from eating the rice cakes, saying the food is for everyone.

Bich's father throws a Vietnamese dance hall party with a hired singer and band but fails to break even financially.

Bich receives Little House in the Big Woods as a birthday gift and later finds deep parallels between pioneer and immigrant life.

Chrissy's absent father reappears and she meets her grandparents; she returns and tells Bich her father called Bich homely.

Bich develops insomnia after watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Noi soothes her by serving pomegranate slices in the bedroom.

Bich meets her birth mother for the first time over dim sum and receives a Buddha-shaped mooncake she cannot bring herself to eat.

In Vietnam, Noi reunites with her sisters for the first time in forty years at their parents' burial site.

Bich's family history is scarred by political violence, as Noi's husband's torture sets the entire clan on the path toward America, and her father's defiance of armed guards at the docks seals their fate. Arriving in Grand Rapids, Bich feels a profound sense of 'missingness' that will define her childhood, as small moments — an overheard racist remark, a lie told to a friend about her absent mother — reveal the cost of straddling two worlds. Her religious questioning comes to a head when she steals from the Buddha altar and discovers what faith actually means to her, separate from the Christianity that surrounds her. Tet celebrations and her father's Vietnamese dance party prove isolating rather than connecting, while her stepsister Chrissy's disappearance into adolescence sharpens Bich's sense of loneliness. Literature opens a new escape route when Bich finds herself in Laura Ingalls Wilder's pioneer world, even as she knows the parallel is imperfect. The memoir's emotional arc closes when Bich finally meets her birth mother, receives a mooncake she cannot eat, and watches Noi reunite with her sisters after forty years apart.

The key revelations and turning points that reshaped Bich's understanding of herself and her world.