[1] The novel tells the tale of a woman, An Tinh Nguyen, born in Saigon in 1968 during the Tet Offensive who immigrates to Canada with her family as a child.

The book switches between her childhood in Vietnam where she was born into a large and wealthy family, her time as a boat person when she left her country for a refugee camp in Malaysia, and her life as an early immigrant in Granby, Quebec.

[5] The book tells the story of the first wave of Boat People who fled Vietnam[6] between 1977 and 1979 and the trauma they lived through, taking the reader on their journey.

[5] The novel is written in 144 unnumbered vignettes, that share the memories of the protagonist in three completely different environments: Her childhood home in Vietnam, a refugee camp in Malaysia, and the town of Granby in Quebec, Canada.

[3] The characters included in the novel are the narrator's family members, both immediate and extended, as well as friends and individuals whom she encountered along her journey.

The novel Ru does not portray the communists in a completely negative perspective, which Thúy claims has caused controversy as a portion of the Vietnamese population blame them for the hardships their families endured.