Owner of a Lonely Heart: A Memoir

Named a Best Memoir of 2023 by Oprah Daily Selected by Time, NPR, and BookPage as a Best Book of 2023 This bookis what memoir writing in the hands of a caring, curious wunderkind can be. Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy From the award-winning author of Stealing Buddhas Dinner, a powerful memoir of a mother-daughter relationship fractured by war and resettlement. At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her family fled Saigon for America. Only Beths mother stayedor was leftbehind, and they did not meet again until Beth was nineteen. Over the course of her adult life, she and her mother have spent less than twenty-four hours together. Owner of a Lonely Heart is a portrait of things left unsaid (The New York Times), a memoir about parenthood, absence, and the condition of being a refugee: the story of Beths relationship with her mother. Framed by a handful of visits over the course of many yearssometimes brief, sometimes interrupted, some alone with her mother and others with the company of her sisterBeth tells an unforgettable (People) coming-of-age story that spans her childhood in the Midwest, her first meeting with her mother, and her own experience of parenthood.