Love Began in Laos

Penelope Khounta went from a sheltered childhood, growing up in middle-class America in the 1940s and 1950s, to traveling to Thailand and Laos, then falling in love with Laos and marrying a Lao man. No American woman had ever married a Lao from a broken family educated in France. Living in a jungle of ignorance, misunderstanding, and confusion, language barriers, and cultural and generational differences compounded her Lao social and family circumstances.