“Beth Nguyen has created a new way to ache that is as comfortable exploring loss, loneliness and longing as it is exploring the contours of joy, survival and, really, the kind of fleshy isolation necessary to make lasting art. The premise here is so compelling, but the execution is otherworldly. Every page of Owner of a Lonely Heart will have you holding your chest with one hand to eagerly turning the page with the other. This book, and the making of lives it explores, is what memoir writing in the hands of a caring, curious wunderkind can be.”
—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

“Owner of a Lonely Heart is the autobiography of a feeling—the story of a fear you cannot name because you are one of the authors, a secret you hid even from yourself in case even this might save you. Nguyen unravels the way the child refugee she was learned to save herself, which turns out to be the final act of saving oneself—not from the country she left, but the country she found. This memoir is a distillation, the sort of cure you make from a poison but can offer to others, and she has written it with a direct, spotlit brilliance, page by careful page.”
—Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
“Nguyen's triumph of a book is forged and fed by her searing curiosity about her refugee family's past and her jeweler's eye for precise detail–all while navigating the geography of her Midwest roots with a big, beautiful heart. A must-read for all who struggle with or celebrate complicated family. This will nourish, rend, and tend your heart.”
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders

“Owner of a Lonely Heart is, quite possibly, the most beautiful memoir I’ve ever read. It is a book about history, about family, about where and to whom we belong, and whether we ever really do. Devastating in both its sharpness and its compassion, this book is a masterpiece— truly, a gift.”
—Lacy M. Johnson, author of The Reckonings

“This brilliant, searching memoir clinches Beth Nguyen’s place among the great writers and thinkers of our day.”
—Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year and A Fortunate Age

“Poignant . . . Beautifully written and painfully honest, Nguyen's memoir reveals the struggles and prejudices refugees face and the importance of knowing your life story." —Booklist

"Quietly moving . . . A ruminative, unadorned, lyrical look at origins, family, and belonging." —Kirkus

“Ruminative . . . This shines as a multilayered look at the ways absence can shape one’s sense of self.” —Publishers Weekly

“A superb writer, Nguyen gives readers a tactile sense of her childhood home life and the love and anguish she felt there.” —BookPage

At the end of the Vietnam War, when Beth Nguyen was eight months old, she and her father, sister, grandmother, and uncles fled Saigon for America. Beth’s mother stayed—or was left—behind, 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 memoir about absence, parenthood, and the condition of being a refugee; the fragmentation of post-war resettlement; and the uncertainty of home. Framed by a handful of visits and phone calls over the course of many years, Beth tells a coming-of-age story that spans her own Midwestern childhood, her first meeting with her mother, and becoming an adult: a writer and, also, a parent herself. Vivid and illuminating, Owner of a Lonely Heart is a deeply personal story of family, connection, and belonging—as a daughter, a mother, and as a Vietnamese refugee in America.