"I live in a coastal town in the deep south of the Mekong Delta. During the war this was IV Corps, which saw many savage fights. Although the battles might have long been forgotten, some places cannot forget." Thus begins the harrowing yet poignant story of a North Vietnamese communist defector who spends ten years in a far-flung reform prison after the war, and now, in 1987, a free man again, finds work as caretaker at a roadside inn in the U Minh region.
One day new guests arrive at the inn: an elderly American woman and her daughter, an eighteen-year-old Vietnamese girl adopted at the age of five from an orphanage in the Mekong Delta. Catherine Rossi has come to find the remains of her son, a lieutenant who went missing-in-action during the war.
Mrs. Rossi's Dream tells the stories of two men in parallel: Giang, the thirty-nine-year-old war veteran, and Nicola Rossi, a deceased lieutenant in the United States Army--the voice of a spirit. From the haunting ugliness of the Vietnam War, the stories of these two men shout, cry, and whisper to us the voices of love and loneliness, barbarity and longing, lived and felt by a multitude of people from all walks of life: an adolescent girl and the tender vulnerability she displays toward a war-hardened drifter who draws beautifully in his spare time; a mother who endures a test of love and faith, and whose determination drives her, rain or shine, into the forest--in the end, wishing only to see, just once, the River of White Water Lilies, the river her son once saw.
About the Author :
Khanh Ha is the author of Flesh and The Demon Who Peddled Longing. He is a seven-time Pushcart nominee, a Best Indie Lit New England nominee, twice a finalist for the William Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Award, and the recipient of Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction and Greensboro Review's Robert Watson Literary Prize in fiction. The Demon Who Peddled Longing was honored by Shelf Unbound as a Notable Indie Book. Ha graduated from Ohio University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.
Feodor Chin, an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator, is an actor classically trained at the American Conservatory Theater and UCLA. His acting career includes numerous credits in film, television, theater, and voice-over.
Andrew Eiden is an actor and winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award for narration. He has been acting since the age of four, working at regional theaters, in national commercials, and on numerous television shows.
Review :
"Gritty and believable...Difficult to put down."
-- "Moon City Review"
"Ha's prose is clear and vivid, whether describing a dying soldier's wounds or local flora and fauna, and his message is so powerfully understated that this beautifully written novel should have a place alongside the best fiction of the Vietnam War."
-- "Booklist"
"Narrators Feodor Chin and Andrew Eiden are the perfect counterpoints for this Vietnam-era historical novel...Chin creates a raspy, Asian-accented English voice for Giang, which helps us picture the aged man he has become. Eiden makes the most of the mystery surrounding Nicola's death and disappearance. Those who follow this period of history will enjoy learning about the personal nature of the conflict from these well-delivered performances."
-- "AudioFile"
