Back Cover:
The account of Dr. Chung and hisfamily will inspire you to believe in second chances and miracles and the Godwho gives them both.
-Max Lucado, New York Times best-selling author
My name is Vinh Chung.
This is a story that spans twocontinents, ten decades, and eleven thousand miles.
When I was three and a half yearsold, my family was forced to flee Vietnam in June 1979, a place we had neverheard of somewhere in the heartland of America.
Several weeks later my family layhalf-dead from dehydration in a derelict fishing boat jammed with ninety-threerefugees lost in the middle of the South China Sea. We arrived in the UnitedStates with nothing but the clothes on our backs and unable to speak a singleword of English.
Today my family holds twenty-oneuniversity degrees.
How wegot from there to here is quite a story.
Wherethe Wind Leads is the remarkable account of Vinh Chung and his refugeefamilys daring escape from communist oppression for the chance of a betterlife in America. Its a story of personal sacrifice, redemption, enduranceagainst almost insurmountable odds, and what it truly means to be American.
All author royalties from the saleof this book will go to benefit World Vision.
Flap Copy:
Vinh Chung was born in SouthVietnam, just eight months after it fell to the communists in 1975. His familywas wealthy, controlling a rice-milling empire worth millions; but withinmonths of the communist takeover, the Chungs lost everything and were reducedto abject poverty.
Knowing that their children wouldhave no future under the new government, the Chungs decided to flee thecountry. In 1979, they joined the legendary boat people and sailed into theSouth China Sea, despite knowing that an estimated two hundred thousand oftheir countrymen had already perished at the hands of brutal pirates andviolent seas.
Wherethe Wind Leads follows Vinh Chung and his family on their desperate journeyfrom pre-war Vietnam, through pirate attacks on a lawless sea, to a miraculous rescue and a new homein the unlikely town of Fort Smith, Arkansas. There Vinh struggled againstpoverty, discrimination, and a bewildering language barrieryet still managedto graduate from Harvard Medical School.
Wherethe Wind Leads is Vinhs tribute to the courage and sacrifice of hisparents, a testimony to his familys faith, and a reminder to people everywherethat the American dream, while still possible, carries with it a greaterresponsibility.
