One of the saddest and most beautiful books I've ever read on the flight of those residents of Burma who chose to flee the Japanese advancing army in 1942. The tale is told by one of the survivors who lost his sister, brother and mother on the trek to freedom in Assam and India, but the story is more than the story of the thousands of refugees who survived (or didn't) the trek, it is also a tale of a mixed Burmese-Scottish marriage, of growing up in Burma in the 1930s, of fathers and sons, and of the resourcefulness and courage of a young boy who first shared his story when he himself was a parent. ( )