But he leaves the sense that he's better for it, and so is any reader who chooses to go along with him for the ride. Pham's journey, over roads and also through memory, proves a harrowing one for him.

Pham is viewed as an outsider, and disliked but also appreciated, almost coveted, as a ticket to the United States. American Vietnamese are resented in Vietnam for leaving, and often prospering, but also envied for their perceived wealth.

More compelling is how he must deal with the return to his country, which has become familiar to him and alien at the same time. But Pham's book is much more than a description of the faces and places he sees. The country is developing but still quite corrupt and desperately poor, trying to reconcile a communist government with a capitalist economy that travels in fits and starts, and threatens to perpetuate the wide breach between haves and have-nots. It's not hard to see in Pham's narrative what in Vietnam might impel a career in social work. The other equally powerful story is that of Pham's return to his homeland, which he travels up and down, from Saigon to Hanoi, on his bicycle. One strand of this engaging story is Pham's memories of growing up in Vietnam, his family's uncertain escape on a tiny boat, and his youth as a poor outsider in the United States. Born in 1967, Pham fled Vietnam with his parents after the war. Pham's book is a story told in two parts. Pham,(Farrar Straus & Giroux, $25) it's hard to disagree with the father. After reading 'Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam,' by Andrew X. The father of a friend said recently that he thought it was his daughter's months-long backpacking trip through Vietnam a few years ago that fueled her desire for a career in social work.

Catfish and mandala review