From Publishers Weekly Somewhere inside this terribly overwritten novel about a runaway Vietnamese-American adolescent is an affecting sketch struggling to breathe free. Tony Hatcher (born Vo Dihn Thanh) lives in New Jersey with his emotionally distant self-absorbed ex-GI father， and is torn between his rootless present and memories of a boyhood in Saigon where his mother， a prostitute， abandoned him. Running away from home at 16， Tony winds up in New York City， fending for himself in a nightmarish world of crime， drugs， whores and panhandlers. He becomes friends with an alcoholic Vietnam War vet， but a knife-wielding， smooth-talking hustler spells trouble. When Tony's father plasters Port Authority bus terminal with missing-person posters， we know some form of confrontation is in store， but the prolix first-person voice that Butler ( The Alleys of Eden ) assigns to narrator Tony fails to build momentum and never fully convinces. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information， Inc.