Carina Hoang

At the age of 16 Carina Hoang left Vietnam with two younger siblings and four hundred strangers in a frail wooden boat and set off across the South China Sea. They survived the harrowing journey and the extreme challenges that followed in a primitive refugee camp, and ultimately were accepted for resettlement in the United States.

In 2006 Carina relocated to Perth, Western Australia and began assisting a number of Vietnamese families to find the graves of their loved ones in former refugee camps based in Indonesia. Carina is now working on a PhD at Murdoch University based on aspects of this book.

Books available from Fremantle Press

• Boat People 2011