Linda Thai and her mother

The issue of immigration is again a dominate concern in the United States. Over the decades, the Irish, Eastern Europeans and Chinese met with hostility and at times violence when they sought opportunity or asylum on our shores.

David James is a local writer and reviewer who has a series in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner profiling immigrant Alaskans. He suggested today’s guest to me. Linda Thai was part of the Vietnamese exodus in the 1970s.  She was only two years old when she and her parents boarded an overcrowded boat in the middle of the night to escape the persecution and possible death. As you’ll hear the found a new home in Australia, but the trauma of events still shapes their lives.

Reviewer Frank Soos looks at Bruce Feiler’s latest book The First Love Story.

And Chris Lott corrects some mistaken notions in his latest edition of Katexic Clippings.