A Year Without Home

by V.T. Bidania

A poignant novel in verse about a Hmong girl losing and finding home in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. For fans of Jasmine Warga and Veera Hiranandani.

"As gripping as it is informative and as beautiful as it is heartbreaking, A Year Without Home does what all great books spark curiosity, ignite compassion, and leave its readers changed for the better. The young people who read V.T. Bidania's story will feel energized and empowered to make their future kinder, more peaceful, and more just than either the past or our present."—Jarrett Lerner, award-winning author-illustrator of A Work in Progress

For eleven-year-old Gao Sheng, home is the lush, humid jungles and highlands of Laos. Home is where she can roll down the grassy hill with her younger siblings after her chores, walk to school, and pick ripe peaches from her family’s trees.

But home becomes impossible to hold onto when the communist government takes over after U.S. troops pull out of the Vietnam War. The communists will be searching for any American allies, like Gao Sheng’s father, a Hmong captain in the Lao Army who fought alongside the Americans against the Vietnamese. If he’s caught, he’ll be killed.

As the adults frantically make plans – contacting family, preparing a route, and bundling up their silver and gold, Gao Sheng wonders if she will ever return to her beloved Laos and what’s to become of her family now. Gao Sheng only knows that a good daughter doesn’t ask questions or complain. A good daughter doesn’t let her family down. Even though sometimes, she wishes she could be just a kid rolling down a grassy hill again.

On foot, by taxi and finally in a canoe, Gao Sheng and her family make haste from the mountains to the capitol Vientiane and across the rushing Mekong River, to finally arrive at an overcrowded refugee camp in Thailand. As a year passes at the camp, Gao Sheng discovers how to rebuild home no matter where she is and finally find her voice.

Inspired by author V.T. Bidania’s family history, A Year Without Home illuminates the long, difficult journey that many Hmong refugees faced after the Vietnam War.

Genres: Middle Grade, Poetry, Historical Fiction, Novel In Verse, Fiction, Asia, War

Kindle Edition

Expected publication January 13, 2026

Reviews

[Lauren Z · Rating 5 out of 5]

This middle grade novel in verse is inspired by the author’s own family history. I read an advanced reader copy and was deeply moved by its honesty and beauty.

The main character, Gao Sheng, is the eldest daughter in a large extended family living together in a house atop a hill in Laos. With her role come many responsibilities, from preparing meals to caring for younger siblings and cousins.

“This is what’s expected
of the oldest daughter,
which means
I don’t really have a choice.

But I would never say that
out loud
to anyone
ever.

Even though it’s true.”

Gao Sheng loves her home—especially her treasured peach tree and the peace she feels at the top of the hill, away from the turmoil around her.

“Whenever I stand at this special spot
On top of this special hill,
I’m so happy I don’t think
About the war at all.”

But when the communist government takes over, her family is forced to leave everything behind and flee as refugees.

“What if we don’t come back?

I don’t know.

What if we never find another place like this?

What he means is
another place
like home.”

This beautiful book honors Bidania’s family, the Hmong people, and all refugees across the world. Looking forward to sharing this book with students, teachers, and librarians.

This powerful and lyrical book honors V.T. Bidania’s family story, the resilience of the Hmong people, and the experiences of refugees worldwide. I look forward to sharing it with students, teachers, and librarians. Expected release date is January 2026.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Year Without Home gives a unique perspective of what life was like in a refugee camp in Thailand back in 1975. This book really gave me a clear look of what life was like for many refugees back then and probably now too. The story is told in verse and it is very hard to put down.

This book would make a great read aloud for upper elementary and middle school classrooms. The book would be a great addition to social studies lessons for studying the region and the end of the Vietnam War.

There are not many books from the Hmong viewpoint in general, and this book would be a great addition for historical fiction sections.

[Bonnie Grover · Rating 4 out of 5]

This NIV memoir will show how war can steal your home away, break your heart and rip families apart. But in the darkest moments, strength, and hope can still be found. The year 2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Hmong refugees arriving in the US and yet the state of the world is just as uncertain as before. It reminded me of “Scattered Stars” and many of the books I have read about the Lost Boys. I know it is going to resonate with many students and I hope others will see it as a window book.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book is beautifully written in verse from the perspective of a young Hmong girl fleeing her home due to war. I loved this reading experience and potentially would have loved it even more had I read it at the age it is aimed at (middle-grade). It is based on the author and her family’s real life experiences of fleeing home. I never usually read the authors notes at the end, but I felt compelled to here.

I would recommend to anyone - I think it may be my favourite historical fiction of the year!

[Crystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Received an ARC of this book for a review. It was good and tells the harrowing tale of a family’s escape from Loas during the Vietnam War. It’s a novel in verse and has several good thought provoking lines that touched me.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written. Put this on your middle grade classroom shelves.

[Meg Eden · Rating 3 out of 5]

This sounds SO GOOD! Can't wait to read!!!

[Ms. Yingling · Rating 3 out of 5]

ARC provided by Follett First Look

In this novel in verse, Gao Sheng is the oldest of five children living an idyllic life with their parents, grandmother, and extended family in a how in Pa Kao, Laos in 1975. The father has been involved in the Vietnam war, but isn't on active duty anymore. When Gao Sheng's school releases students abruptly, the children find out that the communists are threatening to take over their area. Gao Sheng's father comes home, and tells the family that they will be leaving. The family horse and dog are set free, the family packs meager supplies, and takes off in a taxi for an air base. Sadly, they miss the two planes, so go to Vientiane to stay with the mother's cousin and regroup. Since the officials are checking identification on the main roadways, the father disguises himself and goes through the jungle, since he could be arrested for having been in the army. While in the city, the mother is arrested, the police having been tipped off by a taxi driver. Luckily, she is released. Eventually, the family crosses the river into Thailand, where they stay at the Nam Phong refugee camp. The accomodations are basic, but there is food, and the children are able to play soccer. Gao Sheng does needlework with the women, and eventually there is a school set up. Gao Sheng makes a friend, Choua, who leaves to go to live in Tennessee with her family. The family has a short but successful stint of selling moon cakes before the camp authorities shut them down over health concerns. An uncle and his family get sponsors in the US and leave, taking Gao Sheng's brother Yia with them because he is considered very important, being the only boy in the family. The family is transferred to the Ban Vinai refugee camp, where they have to build their own shelter. About a year after leaving g their home, the family eventually makes it to Sparta, Wisconsin, in 1976, not too far from Yia.
Strengths: While Gao Sheng was losing her home, I was finishing fourth grade, wearing Hee Haw overalls and wondering what 5th grade at the middle school would be like. This put the history into perspective for me. While there weren't as many Hmong refugees in Ohio as there were in Wisconsin or Minnesota, there were a few, and looking back to the history 50 years later after so many people left the country is important. It was interesting that the author was so young that she didn't remember her family's journey very well, so she set it from the point of view of her oldest sister, and interviewed family members to get details. This might be why the journey doesn't seem quite as fraught as it no doubt was. This was a fascinating look at a period in history that many readers might not know about.
Weaknesses: While this is a beautifully written novel in verse with a lot of poetic descriptions and palpable longing for a lost home, I'm not sure how many of my students will make it past the detailed descriptions of small events and feelings. The authors note at the end was helpful in explaining the history behind the family's experience, but it would have been good to see more of that in the text.
What I really think: This is a good choice for readers who are interested in tales of displacement such as Lai's Inside Out and Back Again, Athaide's Wings to Soar, or Dobbs' The Barefoot Dreams of Petra Luna.

[haidyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eleven-year-old Gao Sheng has lived her whole life in the highlands of Laos; an idyllic childhood with ripe peaches for eating, and afternoons spent rolling down the grassy hills with her siblings and cousins. They live together in a big house on the hill: Grandma, Dad, Mom, brother and sisters, Aunts, Uncles, and cousins. And together, they are happy. But when the stain of war spreads towards their home, Gao Sheng and her family are forced to flee, leaving behind all that they have known.

Things I Loved:

Peaches - Gao Sheng's small bag of peach seeds came to represent some symbol for home, as a present place and an idea. Her home in Laos is surrounded by peach trees. In the year spent as refugees in a foreign place, home is caught in the in-between, much like the peach seeds without a place to grow. It is in this in-between that she realizes home is with family, reviving her hope for the future. And later, when they are given the opportunity to move to America, Gao Sheng says she will try and grow her peach trees there. A place she will make her own, a place to call home.

"A Good Daughter" - Gao Sheng's inner conflict between being a "good daughter" to her family and her desire for opportunity was an interesting highlight of this story. Throughout her life, she has been dedicated to the nurturing and care of her young siblings and cousins. During their escape and later as refugees in a foreign country, she experiences a greater mental and emotional load from her role as eldest daughter in the family. Many times she expresses a desire to drop her tasks, to shout and play with the other children. But a good daughter is quiet, hardworking; a vegetable picker. As time passes, friends teach her to be loud, speak with confidence, laugh with her heart. When the time comes to build a house in the new refugee camp, she steps into a new role, assisting her father and uncles in their labor. It is after this that she overhears her Aunts and Mom discussing her with another refugee woman, in a moment she notes as the first to hear a compliment from her Mom:

"We always say you're fortunate
to have such a good daughter,
Auntie Shoua says.

She's more than that.
She's becoming a tougher girl.
She once took care of her little siblings
alone outside a police station in Vientiane,
and she even built our house.

The woman gasps.
Built a house? You mean like a man?

Mom shakes her head.
No. Better."

5-stars to A Year Without Home, a heart-felt tribute to Bidania's eldest sister, Gao Sheng, Bidania's other family members, the people of Laos that escaped as refugees, and those that remained. Told in the illuminating prose of author V.T. Bidania (who appears in this novel as Round Moon, the youngest member of the Hmong refugee family), this book is a beautiful and emotional story of love and loss, the pursuit of hope, and a discovery of home.

Thank you to the author for sharing this powerful and moving story. And thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for providing an ARC of this book.

[Melanie Dulaney · Rating 4 out of 5]

At 11 years old, Gao Sheng and her family is forced to flee her beloved home in Laos when the threat by the newly installed Communist government and against the Hmong people who sided with America during the Vietnam War becomes too great to risk staying. Their flight is filled with risk at every turn and even when safely in Thailand, the year long stay in two refugee camps is filled with hunger, poor food and sanitary conditions, a sense of hopelessness and an intense longing for the home left behind. Amid all this, Gao Sheng struggles to find her own identity while enmeshed in a culture that typically relegates females to positions of only childcare and household chores and elevates males in the family to superior positions of authority and value.

Told in NIV that flows smoothly with each word carefully selected and nothing superfluous included keeps the reader focused on Gao Sheng’s two goals-finding home and her own sense of self-worth. Author V. T. Bidania spends much time establishing her main character’s love of the large, hilltop house surrounded by peach trees and her feeling of unimportance, both threading through the time spent running to a safe country and waiting in refugee camps until a sponsor agrees to support them as they settle in another country. As Gao’s family learns to work together to make a new home wherever they are, she begins to speak up a bit more and finds new ways to shine, ultimately realizing how much her parents and extended family do, in fact, value her.

Based on Bidania’s family’s real life escape from the threat of the Communist government in Laos, there is an authenticity that rings out and will intrigue and teach readers in grades 4-7 and hopefully often them a new way to look at those seeking home in a new place and opening their eyes to a part of history they may have previously been unaware. Back matter includes photographs of Gao Sheng and her family (Bidania being the youngest child and only a baby when they fled) as well as additional historical notes. Text is free of profanity and sexual content and the violence is kept understated.

Thanks for sharing a print arc, V. T. Bidania and Penguin Kids/Nancy Paulsen Books.

[Sam B · Rating 5 out of 5]

“A Year Without Home” is an absolutely stunning historical work told entirely in verse. It tells us of a Hmong family and their flight from Laos following the Vietnam War. Gao Sheng’s father was a soldier in the army and aided the US in the war, making him a target after the communists take over. The entire family, comprised of Gao Sheng, her parents, her four siblings, and numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins all flee their mountain home to escape being killed. Bidania does a beautiful job showing us the beauty of the highlands, the love among the family, and the fear and uncertainty they feel when they are forced to leave. We then see the family escape to Vientiane, and then to different refugee camps as time goes on. We see much of Gao Sheng’s complicated feelings about her role as the eldest daughter among all the cousins and the parentification she experiences during hardship compared to the treatment her younger brother receives. I also loved how each poem could stand alone as a meaningful piece of writing, and then when they are all put together tell the story cohesively. Bidania truly accomplishes a massive feat of storytelling with relatively few words relative to the page length. I found this a particularly meaningful and informative book after spending a month in Minnesota taking care of Hmong patients and their families, and working alongside Hmong healthcare professionals; I feel I have gained a new appreciation for what previous generations went through to reach safety. This was a beautiful piece of writing and I hope it will soon be readily available in every library.

My thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Pat Trattles · Rating 5 out of 5]

As soon as this book hits the shelves, run out and buy it! It deals with a piece of history that very few books tackle – the fall of Laos to the Communists after the Vietnam War and the plight of those who escaped to Thailand and lived in the overcrowded refugee camps while waiting until it was safe to go home again. Chronicling the author’s own family’s experience the story paints a vivid picture of the refugee experience in a beautiful verse style. When forced to flee Laos in the dead of night to escape the murdering Communist regime, the family can only take the bare minimum with them but Gao Sheng manages to sneak a pack of peach seeds into her meager belongings to remind her of the peach tree in their yard. The seeds and the peaches that will grow from them become a symbol of hope throughout the story. And although the deplorable conditions the family faces throughout are not glossed over, the story ultimately is filled with hope and the realization that home is not a place, but rather home is wherever family is together. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Sirah · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this novel in verse, Gao Sheng and her Hmong family realize they have to flee their beautiful home in Laos when the American soldiers leave Vietnam. They spend a year in a refugee camp while Gao Sheng wrestles with what it means to be a girl in her family's male-dominated culture.

I have a lot of respect for the fact that this book is based on a true story and even includes an afterword explaining the real-life counterparts to some of the characters. There were a lot of moments when the lyricism was truly breathtaking. This was a hard book to read, but of course, it was meant to be a hard book as it deals with hard topics. I struggled a little with the emotional arc of Gao Sheng establishing her own strength as a girl. I can definitely see an audience this would appeal to, it just didn't resonate with me personally. I learned a lot, and I think I understand my Hmong neighbors a bit better after having experienced this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

[Diana Strand · Rating 5 out of 5]

11-year-old Gao Sheng is a quiet, dutiful girl living an idyllic life with her extended family in the hills of Laos when her world is turned upside down. The communist government takes over Laos after US forces withdraw from Vietnam, meaning her family must flee since her father is a captain in the Lao army. They first flee to family, and then make a river crossing to a refugee camp in Thailand. They hope to stay there until it is safe to return to Laos, but they end up making additional moves.

Gao Sheng is the eldest daughter, torn between her duties as a girl and her desire to express her own wishes and live with the freedom her brother enjoys. However, it is her brother who ends up with the greater burden as the eldest son. This verse novel was all the more heartbreaking after reading the author's note and learning that Gao Sheng is based on the author's oldest sister.

Thanks to NetGalley and Nancy Paulsen Books for the advance digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

[Caitriona Riding · Rating 4 out of 5]

* Thank you to NetGalley for gifting me an e-arc of this book in exchange for my honest review!

This middle grade follows a young Hmong girl and her family as they flee Laos after the Vietnam War in fear for their lives under the communist regime. It’s written in verse, which I thought was very unique and a pleasant change of pace for a middle grade.

I thoroughly enjoyed this little novel. I think the heavy historical aspect was done very well for the middle grade audience. I enjoyed learning some about the Hmong people, whose stories I wasn’t aware of before this.

I think it’ll definitely be one I can share with my girls when they get to middle school age, and get some good discussion and conversations out of with them.

Content & Trigger Warnings:
Mentions of bombings, attacks, family separation, violence & war.

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Novel in Verse
I received an electronic ARC from Penguin Young Readers Group through NetGalley.
Bidania takes readers through the journey her family took as they fled from Laos through Refugee Camps in Thailand to coming to the United States.
The story is told from the oldest daughter's perspective. Gao Sheng is a "good daughter" in her Hmong family. She knows what is expected of her and she follows all of the rules, but inside she feels a gamut of emotions as she is only eleven when this begins. The various types of poems help emphasize her emotions as her world unravels. This refugee story will resonate for readers from a variety of heritages. I appreciate the ending as the family is reunited in Wisconsin.
Be sure to read the Author's Note as she provides more information on her family and the time period.

[Leigh Knapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Year Without Home offers a glimpse into the life of a girl and her family as they experience being forced from their home, life in a refugee camp, and eventually resettling in the United States. It is a perfect book for upper elementary and middle school students, allowing them to put themselves in the shoes of someone experiencing injustice due to war while also dealing with coming of age issues. I work in a school library with many students who are refugees or the children or grandchildren of refugees, so this book will be highly relevant to my students, while also helping those from other backgrounds learn more about the experiences of families affected by displacement. I highly recommend this book. I not only experienced the story from a first person perspective, but also found myself looking up the history of Laos to better understand the events that led to these experiences.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A year without home, told in verse, centers around a young Hmong girl, the daughter of a soldier, growing up in the mountains of Laos. When the communist party takes control of the government, her family, 9 adults and 11 children, has to flee the country. After being unable to leave on American airplane flights, they escape across the Mekong River to Thailand. After spending time in 2 refugee camps, the family is sponsored and moves to Wisconsin and then onto Minnesota. The author tells their family story in the point of view of her oldest sister. This is a good primer to introduce the history of the Hmong people and their emigration. Highly recommend.

I received an Advanced Reader Copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

[Jessica Larsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this advance copy, but encourage readers to find this one when it publishes in January 2026. This middle-grade story, written in verse, centers on a young girl fleeing with her family from Laos to Thailand. I loved that so much happened but the story was written as poems. The author's note at the end was incredible.

[Hannah Reagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book written in verse for young people. It was great reading a moment in time that is rarely written or spoken about. Even better is getting to hear the story of war and refugee life from the eyes of a child. A great read for any age.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent story with beautiful metaphors. An insightful book to help young readers understand the challenges of refugees. I enjoyed this glimpse into a rarely-told story of history, and the lovely tribute the author made to her family's legacy.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful novel in verse about a refugee family fleeing Laos after the Vietnam War