In 1981, a mother faced death as she lay on the floor of a small boat in the South China Sea fleeing for her life after the Vietnam War.
In 2008, her daughter lay awaiting death after being brutally raped and beaten while returning books at the Bloomingdale Regional Library.
The brutal attack against Queena left her with a traumatic brain injury and the inability to walk, see, or speak. While Vanna Nguyen poured herself into helping her severely disabled daughter after the attack, she also struggled with reliving her own history, and more so, with how to forgive the young man who hit her daughter so forcefully that he cracked her skull, stole her daughter's innocence, took away her daughter's future, and changed both their lives forever.
In The Life She Once Knew, Vanna Nguyen speaks candidly about faith, love, and forgiveness through hard times and chronicles the deeply emotional and powerful journeys of these two women as they fight for their lives and their futures decades apart.
