In her new book, "The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc and the Photograph That Changed the Course of the Vietnam War," Canadian journalist Denise Chong chronicles Kim Phuc's life before and after the devastation captured on film. Kim Phuc would have to recover not only from her terrible burns, but eventually from her own fame as well. The Communist regime's relentless manipulation of her as propaganda material frustrated her attempts to live a "normal" life. She was sent first to the Soviet Union, then Germany, finally to Cuba. On return to Cuba from a honeymoon trip to Moscow, Kim and her husband defected to Canada, where they live today with their two children.

Denise Chong trained as an economist and worked as a senior economic advisor for Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau until 1984. She is the author of the much-praised family memoir, "The Concubine's Children."

We look at the image of Kim running from the napalm attack and we're horrified. We think, "What can I do?" In John Berger's essay "Photographs of Agony," he writes that when we view shocking war photographs our response "is bound to be felt as inadequate." By writing this book, you pushed well beyond that response.

Yes, but you can't underestimate the power of this photograph. I had it on my wall for years and then finally I had absorbed it enough that I could take it off the wall and finish my writing. The power is that it makes you look inside yourself. And when you look inside, you realize it all comes back to the idea of human failing and the angst of human inadequacy.

What gave you the idea of pursuing this story?

It literally fell into my lap.

How so?

"The Concubine's Children" was just out, and I was considering what I would write about next. Out of the blue, I got a call from my publisher. It had been hush-hush until that point that Kim was in Canada, that Kim was in the West at all. She was then in such desperate straits -- her husband was scavenging through garbage for baby furniture -- that she decided she'd sell her story. So she made the deal with my publisher who then came to me. What surprised my publisher was that I didn't say yes immediately.

Why was that?

Having written my family memoir, I'd begun to understand the tool and the power of memory. I wondered if this tool was going to work in this case. Memory is so flawed. Kim was a child when this happened. War is traumatic. Memory's under assault. I thought I'd have to meet her several times, to see if there was a trust.

What were those first meetings like?

I had to be clandestine about my meetings with Kim. I hadn't concluded the deal, and my publisher didn't want any competing bids. It was very quiet. Here was someone who was paranoid about the media and still afraid of the regime [in Vietnam], and I almost felt I was a stalker myself. Then that shaped my whole idea that this was a victim of war. This is what war does: It makes victims. Is there any other fate for her?

By the end of the story, she's moved beyond being a victim of war and that's what's so satisfying to see. Do you think the book has helped facilitate that?

I think the book was enormously helpful to her.

In shaping her memory?

Yes. When Kim read the manuscript for the first time, she just said, "It's not true. It just can't be true." But of course I had it all on tape from the interviews in Vietnam. She knew so little about the war! You know, the closer you are to war, the less you know what's going on. When she started to see those pieces around her, it eased her own idea of how much she had suffered, because she saw how others had suffered as well. She couldn't believe how much her mother had suffered. She hadn't been aware of that. She hadn't been aware of how her family had been pulled apart during the war, and she did refuse to believe it at first, even though clearly I had the interviews.

To the right of Kim in the photo are soldiers and some of the photographers. It's odd to me that their body posture is so relaxed and the running terrified children are under such incredible stress. The children and the photographers are having such a different experience of the same moment.

Yes, it flashes by them. Not until those journalists see that picture on the wire do they realize that, out of that day, this is what will be remembered. Even seasoned journalists like [New York Times reporter] Fox Butterfield did not foresee that. He didn't mention Kim in his story.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"