Joyce Burns Zeiss (Chicago, IL) has always wanted to be a writer. After retiring from teaching junior high school, she became a member of the Off Campus Writers Workshop in Winnetka, Illinois. Her experiences resettling a Chinese Cambodian refugee family in 1979 and her subsequent trips to work in refugee camps in Africa fueled her interest in the plight of the refugee. Her first novel, Out of the Dragon's Mouth, is based on the true-life experiences of a fellow teacher who fled Vietnam as an adolescent to cross the South China Sea in the hold of a fishing boat. To learn more, visit her website at www.joyceburnszeiss.com.

Joyce Burns Zeiss (Chicago, IL) has always wanted to be a writer. After retiring from teaching junior high school, she became a member of the Off Campus Writers Workshop in Winnetka, Illinois. Her experiences resettling a Chinese Cambodian refugee family in 1979 and her subsequent trips to work in refugee camps in Africa fueled her interest in the

"Given the dearth of material about the exodus of the families that supported democracy in Vietnam, this novel has value in helping to bring home to modern readers the great costs they suffered." --Kirkus Reviews

"This well-written ... story puts emotions and a face to the word "refugee." --School Library Journal