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9781941049358

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5.0 out of 5 starsAn incredible book by an incredible woman!BySteve on August 8, 2016I can't tell you the last time I picked up a book and finished it. That is, until someone told me about Undaunted A Memoir. I was going on an airplane and would need something to read so I downloaded it on Kindle. The author had me from the moment my eyes focused on a picture of a beautiful 5 year old Vietnamese child at the beginning of the memoir. It is the author's picture and it is her story - the story of a 5 year old girl left an orphan in 1964 during the Vietnam War. The picture is haunting. I will never forget the child's pitiless look of determination, distrust, trepidation, strength and hope all at once. The Mona Lisa, shrouded in mystery, but without her smile. By the time Van was 15 she had already lived more than most people live in a lifetime. She could teach me more than I could imagine if I would give her a chance. Life eventually makes orphans of us all. Some of us get an early start. It began. And with those words, I knew there was no turning back. I felt an obligation to give this child my respect, my undivided attention. To listen to her story of survival. Orphaned by war, Van was wandering alone on the streets at the tender age of four. Once I began reading, it was impossible to stop. I was drawn in by the strength and determination of this small child! By the end of the book she had found an everlasting place in my heart. There is no self-pity in her telling of the horrors she witnessed and experienced. Instead, her reflections consist of her determined and undaunted efforts to survive crimes so unimaginable that the visual pictures created will be forever etched in my memory. Even the best roads can be bumpy, and, for my first fifteen years of life, mine was seeded with bullets and bombs. The sad truth is, the author notes, her story is an old story begun afresh each day in war zones around the world. If there is ever any hope for peace in this world we live in, it will come though books like Undaunted A Memoir. It is Van Choat's gift to the world. I realized when I finished the book that change begins in the heart. When we learn to understand and accept, and put ourselves in someone else's shoes, we can learn to love outside ourselves. Not only should Undaunted A Memoir be read by young and old, it should be taught in classrooms, where change begins.

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