SONG OF SAIGON

A Vietnamese refugee movingly recalls her life during wartime, her escape, and her sometimes bumpy adjustment to life in the US.

Nineteen when she and her family managed to get on one of the last helicopters taking off from the US Embassy roof in Saigon in 1975, Sawyer first explains how the family came to be Christian in a narrative crafted by veteran coauthor Proctor (Sally, 1990, etc.). Anh’s grandfather had been a bureaucrat employed by the French colonial government in Hanoi. Unhappy with his work and his wife, he became addicted to opium; saved by an American missionary, he converted to Christianity and dedicated his life to God. Her father, the son of a prominent landlord, became a communist and was imprisoned by the French; after the communists took over in North Vietnam, he got into trouble with the Party, and the family had to flee to Saigon. As communists advanced from the north, an elder brother who lived in America tried but failed to get them exit visas, and they joined the mob of panicked Vietnamese on the embassy grounds. In the US, religious organizations found the family homes, work, and a college for Anh in the Midwest. There she fell in love with fellow student Philip Sawyer, an aspiring fashion designer who seemed refreshingly different from everyone else. They married and moved to New York, but while Anh thrived working for an airline, Philip was unable to succeed in his chosen field and became depressed. Her religious faith wavered until they moved to Kansas, where Philip’s depression was cured by a speaker at a prayer meeting. In the late 1990s, Anh began working with Vietnamese relief groups, and she recalls a visit to Vietnam in 1998 that allowed her to come to comforting closure with her past.

Vivid testimony to faith and the human spirit amidst chaos and daunting change.