It is one of the most recognizable and potent images of the 20th century: a naked girl runs screaming along a dirt road toward the camera, the sky behind her dark and burning with napalm. Nick Ut’s 1972 Associated Press photograph won a Pulitzer Prize, and is recognized as a significant factor in both the American anti-war movement and in encouraging the American withdrawal from Vietnam. The Girl in the Picture is Denise Chong’s telling of the Kim Phuc story, before and after the napalm attack on her village.

While her pained image remained frozen in the popular consciousness, Phuc healed and grew, becoming a powerful propaganda tool for the new government of Vietnam. We witness the destruction of her family; the steady dissolution of her dreams and goals; the corruption and inhumanity of the officials in whose supposed care Phuc remained for much of her life. The juxtaposition of these elements with Phuc’s generosity of spirit and forgiveness, her patience and endurance, is striking: her eventual defection to Canada and reconciliation with the American who ordered the strike on her village is absolutely inspiring.

However, Chong cannot do justice to the story she has to tell. Wisely, she maintains a journalistic distance from her subject, avoiding the (high) potential for melodrama and histrionics. Unavoidably, this neutral, matter-of-fact tone pales compared to the raw power of the photograph itself, and the book seems flat as a result, lacking the rich emotional resonance and immediacy of Chong’s best-selling 1995 memoir The Concubine’s Children. That the closing pages of the book nevertheless achieve a powerful catharsis is a testimony both to the power of Phuc’s story, and to Chong’s talent as a writer, even in these proscribed circumstances.