Bản Tiếng Anh này được dịch từ cuốn Vực Xoáy - Tiếng Uất Gào Còn Vang Vọng Trên Biển Đông (Vượt Biên) của Châu Thụy.
Using the last sources available to them, the parents of Vu Doan arrange for him to leave Viet Nam with the hope of joining his brother in the United States.  With dread in his heart, Vu reluctantly leaves his family to stay with a distant relative in Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City. He must wait patiently until someone takes him to the escape location.  Beyond this, he knows only that every escape is dangerous and that getting caught meant years in prison and severe penalties for his family.
              After weeks of sweating in an attic, he is finally picked up and taken to a town on the southwest coast.  There, along with three other men, he lives in a thatched shed and waits for a boat.  The shed belongs to Tam Tran, a kind man willing to risk his own safety for others’ escapes. Vu falls in love with Tam’s daughter Van, a beautiful but tragedy-stricken girl, whose mother died in a bombing raid. 
              As they get to know each other, Vu begins to question his resolve about the escape.  He does not want to leave Van behind, especially because she returns his love.  However, he knows he has to leave when a boat is finally available. Unfortunately, he was sent back due to unforeseen circumstances.  More time goes by, another attempt fails, and he ends up back in the attic in Ho Chi Minh City.  Eventually, he escapes with 88 other people in a small boat on the Gulf of Thailand. Here, he observes and suffers the incomprehensible barbarity of the Thai pirates, who rape and murder the defenseless refugees with no mercy. Of the 88 refugees, 23 survive and reach the shores of Thailand, where they are grudgingly accepted and housed in miserable camps. 
              In Viet Nam, almost immediately after Vu’s departure, Tam is arrested and tortured.  When Van visits Tam, he tells her to leave their home country in an effort to reunite with Vu. Although devastated at the idea of abandoning her father, Van begrudgingly obeys him and leaves with her aunt and cousin.  This boat that she sails upon suffered the same fate as Vu’s boat. The cousin is murdered, and Van and the aunt are raped repeatedly before being taken to a small island.  The pirates isolate the women, so they can come and rape them again at their convenience.  Reduced to an animal existence and as prey to the pirates, Van is ready for death to relieve her from her misery. 
              After three weeks, a boat rescues them. By some miracle, Van is reunited with Vu.  While she still loves him, she can no longer show any affection and shies from his every touch.  Realizing she has lost the only thing a woman can offer the man she loves, her virginity, she feels dirty and unworthy.  A few weeks later, Van experiences immense fatigue and other worrisome symptoms. She is taken to a clinic after she has a serious fainting spell. After her aunt takes her back to their hut, the doctor tells Vu that Van is pregnant from one of her rapists.  For Van, this feels like the last horror she can suffer. Unfortunately, she was wrong: shortly after,  she learns that her father died in prison. 
              Now, Vu learns that he’s been cleared to leave for the United States, but Van has not been given that same blessing. She has no relative in another country to sponsor her.  While Vu considers marrying her so that they can go together, he hesitates because of her instability after the rapes.  
To release him from any doubt about leaving and to escape all the tragedy that has been visited on her, Van commits suicide by taking rat poison.  Utterly devastated, Vu leaves the camp and joins his brother in America.  He devotes much of his future to preserving the memories of the boat people by exposing the brutality of the Thai pirates, who have never been held accountable for their inhumanity.