Fire Road is Kim Phuc Phan Thi’s deeply personal account of surviving unimaginable suffering and searching for meaning in its aftermath. Known around the world as “the Napalm Girl,” the child captured in one of the most haunting photographs of the Vietnam War, Kim’s life was changed in an instant.
Though her body survived the attack, the years that followed were marked by relentless physical pain, emotional trauma, political manipulation, and a longing for freedom she could not yet grasp.
But this story is not only about trauma. It is about redemption. It is about how faith meets a wounded soul and slowly, patiently offers forgiveness, purpose, and hope where none seemed possible.
One excerpt especially moved me:
On the wooden bench in my sister’s backyard, I looked skyward… “God! Where are you? Do you even exist at all? Why am I made to suffer like this? Why will you not come to my aid?”
… “If you will just give me a friend—just one person who knows you and who can help me know you—then I will agree not to take my life.”
This moment resonated deeply. Many of us may never endure the physical agony Kim carried for decades, but how many of us have reached our own breaking point and cried out the same questions to God?
And in the darkness, God answered. The very next day she met a friend at church who discipled her faithfully, meeting with her week after week before services to talk about the things of God. The most valuable lessons she learned were simple but life-changing: how to pray and how to pray Scripture back to God, especially the Psalms.
She also learned to take her thoughts captive. When fear whispered, Your family will disown you. God could never want you. You’ve gone too far. she learned to redirect those lies with truth. How the enemy loves to taunt us. But when we take our thoughts captive, God gently points them in a different direction.
One of the most heartbreaking parts of the book is when her mother discovers she has become a Christian and disowns her. Instead of responding with anger, Kim answers with gentleness:
“Ma, I love you… I know that I hurt you very deeply when I left our family’s faith to follow Jesus.”
This part felt personal to me. I’m walking through something similar, and seeing Kim’s steady love — and ultimately witnessing how her mother later came to Christ — was profoundly encouraging. It reminded me that our obedience to Christ is never wasted, even when it costs us dearly.
In another powerful section Kim writes:
I would pray for everyone involved in the Vietnam War, for those who had marginalized me because of my unsightly scars, those who had misunderstood me, or neglected to help me, or failed to treat me as a human being who had real feelings… for all of them, for every last one on my list. The more I prayed, the better I felt and the better I felt, the lighter my spirits were. At some point – two or three months into this practice, perhaps – I looked along the lines of my prayer journal and realized that the people I had been fervently praying for were the same ones who used to be on my list of enemies! Wow, I remembered thinking, my heart must surely be changing, for the very people I wanted to murder now feel nothing but love.
I just find this part so amazing. And you wouldn’t know just how miraculous this is if you’ve never really hated anyone in your life. Only God turn hate into love. And Kim goes on to write that the fact is we are all children of war, whether we have seen a single bomb fall from the sky. A battle is being waged inside of us, and the spoils are our souls. Every person knows on some level what it is to suffer and strive, what it is to wear scars they cannot erase. Although Kim had to say goodbye to her dream of becoming a medical doctor, but God used her story to heal souls instead.
I was also really touched by her friendship with Bac Dong the communist prime minister of North Vietnam and her eagerness in bringing the gospel to him. It just goes to show that the gospel is for everyone.
I love how candid Kim is here:
Even as I was learning to trust God to redeem all of the difficult circumstances I had faced throughout my life, my story is still my story, and that story is saddled with pain. Once we see something, we cannot unsee it. Once we hear something, we cannot unhear it. Once we live something, we cannot unlive it. This is certainly true for me. And so, while I have grown in my faith in Jesus to the point of knowing that all of the bad things really are being worked together for good in my life, the residue of those bad things still exist.
One practical way Kim coped with suffering was by intentionally looking for small evidences of God’s faithfulness each day and thanking Him for them. Her life beautifully reflects Philippians 4:6–7 — bringing everything to God in prayer with thanksgiving and receiving a peace that guards the heart and mind.
Kim writes:
In those private moments with God, I began to sharpen my ability to spot evidences of God’s faithfulness in my daily life.
And gradually pieces of the puzzle of the events that happened started coming together so that she was able to see the big picture. She would learn about people who prayed for her and treated her and be filled with gratitude. After three decades she was finally handed one such puzzle piece to a maddening question she had carried all those years. It was a question that had tormented her and it was why the people at the hospital had put her in the morgue leaving her to die after the napalm attack. And for that answer, you’ll have to read the book my friend.
Another excerpt:
“For decades I harbored bitterness toward the doctors and nurses who had left me in the hospital morgue. It was only when the scientist gave me greater perspective that I understood why they did so. I wish I had trusted God earlier with that hard part of my story so that I could have been spared from carrying that awful burden of bitterness.”
Kim’s story reminds us that we can trust God with every hard part of our story — even the parts that feel unanswered, unfair, or unfinished.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book. There is so much to learn from Kim’s story — about suffering, forgiveness, perseverance, and the quiet faithfulness of God. Her life is a powerful reminder that even the deepest wounds are not beyond redemption, and her testimony will both challenge and encourage you in your own walk.
Some favorite quotes:
- The more we cry, the more we pray.
- I simply had to choose God, moment by moment.
- His (God’s) hands are strong and His arm is never too short to reach those whose hearts are his.
- “Pain is my partner, just as in a marriage” – a partner not to be scorned but rather embraced.
- My ‘position’ on this and all matters, is forgiveness. My ‘position’ if you will, is love.
