Laura Manivong

When you're so skinny people call you Skeleton Boy, how do you find strength for the fight of your life?

Vonlai knows that soldiers who guard the Mekong River shoot at anything that moves, but in oppressive Communist Laos, there's nothing left for him, his spirited sister, Dalah, and his desperate parents. Their only hope is a refugee camp in Thailand—on the other side of the river.

When they reach the camp, their struggles are far from over. Na Pho is a forgotten place of squalid huts, stifling heat, and rationed food. Still, Vonlai tries to carry on as if life is normal. He pays attention in school, a dusty barrack overcrowded with kids too hungry to learn and to forget his empty stomach, he plays soccer in a field full of rocks. But when someone inside the camp threatens his family, Vonlai calls on a forbidden skill to protect their future—a future he's sure is full of promise, if only they can make it out of Na Pho alive.

In her compelling debut, Laura Manivong has written an evocative story that is vividly real, strongly affecting, and, at its heart, about hope that resonates in even the darkest moments. 

Laura Manivong is an Emmy-winning television producer who never knew she wanted to write books until 10 years into her TV career. ESCAPING THE TIGER was first published in hard cover by HarperCollins in 2010. Before that, Laura sold a 130-word early reader titled ONE SMART FISH to Scholastic Press. She is now working on her second novel, a ghostly, ghastly tale set in the desert southwest that surrounds the reintroduction of the lobo, aka the Mexican gray wolf. Laura lives on the prairie, or close to it, with her two lovely, loud, creative children, her even louder dog, and ever-shifting piles of clutter.