About this item
After the fall of South Vietnam, 14-year-old Mai is forced to flee to a refugee camp on an island off the coast of Malaysia, where she must navigate numerous hardships while waiting to be sponsored for entry into America.
About the Author
Joyce Burns Zeiss has always wanted to be a writer. After retiring from teaching junior high school, she became a member of Off Campus Writers Workshop in Winnetka, IL. Her experiences with resettling a Chinese Cambodian refugee family in 1979 and her subsequent trips to work in refugee camps in Africa have fueled her interest in the plight of the refugee. Zeiss' first novel, OUT OF THE DRAGON'S MOUTH, is based on the true-life experiences of a fellow teacher who fled Viet Nam as an adolescent to cross the South China Sea in the hold of a fishing boat. It is forthcoming in 2015 from FLUX publisher. A graduate of Northwestern University, Joyce also holds an M. A. from DePaul University in English, and a reading specialist degree from National Louis University. She is represented by The Purcell Agency, LLC. She and her husband reside in a suburb of Chicago with their dog, Charcoal. When she isn't writing, she tutors at-risk children in reading, babysits for her grandchildren, and sneaks away several times a year to travel the world.
