Dust of Life: A True Ban Vinai Love Story
Encyclopedia
Dust of Life: A True Ban Vinai Love Story is the first novel of G. Y. Lee
Gary Yia Lee
Gary Yia Lee is a Hmong anthropologist and author based in Australia. Lee was born in Ban Houei Kouang, Muong Mok, Xieng Khouang, Laos. In 1961, his family was displaced by the civil war and they joined other Hmong refugees in the city of Vientiane. He excelled in a Lao school system run by the...

. It was first published in the year 2004. It is not clear whether the novel is autobiographical.

It takes you on the romantic journey of Mua, a young Hmong
Hmong people
The Hmong , are an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Hmong are also one of the sub-groups of the Miao ethnicity in southern China...

 man. Shortly after completing his university studies in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

, he was asked by Pufua, a refugee girl in Ban Vinai, to help sponsor her and her family for settlement in the USA. Although he barely knew her, he travelled to Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

to see what he could do. It was agreed that if they got on well, he would marry her and apply for her and her family to come and live with him in the USA.

Things are not straightforward and Pufua is reluctant to wed after a series of events in the refugee camp, unbeknownst to Mua. Slowly and surely he begins to work out what has happened.
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