Excerpt from Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

When a jeep appeared that day to recruit them for the hospital, they had only recently returned to their own town. They hadn't meant to. It was just that there didn't seem to be anywhere else they could go anymore.

Alisak and Prany were now seventeen, Noi a year younger. It was the early fall of 1969. Their last season together here. Or at least that was what Vang told them. That they would in all likelihood be evacuating soon.

Alisak never said this out loud, but he felt as though he could stay here with them in the madness of this house forever. He thought there would be nothing better. Paintings, mirrors, pillows, and tall windows. A kitchen and a piano upstairs. The three of them always together. The great motorbikes.

Their answers to the question of where they went to in the evenings, in their dreams or when they were awake, as they tried to keep their minds off the denotation flashes coming closer and getting louder, and the steady flood of the maimed and the wounded, were always different.

Where did they go at nights?

A museum or Paris. The moon. A cave, an endless beach. They had been doing this since they were children.

No one ever said home.

Excerpted from Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon. Copyright © 2020 by Paul Yoon. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.