From Laborer to Author: The Flowers in Heaven Are Rooted in Hell is the biography of an astonishing - and stubborn - man. Hoa Minh Truong changed his life around because of the English he learned in a re-education camp after Saigon fell on April 30, 1975. English was strictly banned when the Vietcong launched a counter-revolution culture campaign by collecting English books in a public place and burning them. Learning English was dangerous in re-education camps, but Hoa risked his life and promised to write his true story if he survived. His mother revealed a pocket dictionary was still...