LOCAL AUTHOR! Piles of Salt - This compelling oral history of a Laotian war refugee and future United States immigrant details his early life as a boy growing up in rural Laos and chronicles how the child becomes a man, warrior, and POW; eventually detailing how he defies the dangerous hurdles placed before him when fleeing his war torn nation, and seeking asylum in a hospitable new land. Each paragraph in Piles of Salt creates tension while allowing the reader to empathize with the narrator, Casey, as he pointedly and often humorously, recounts his personal memories of the severe and desperate impact of being forced to leave one’s home and country in hopes of creating a new life free of fear and danger.