DUST CHILD

An American GI, a Vietnamese woman, and an Amerasian man who grew up in an orphanage seek closure decades after the Vietnam War.

Nguyễn’s stirring if sometimes melodramatic second novel—following The Mountains Sing (2020)—braids three distinct experiences of war and trauma. Phong, mixed-race and certain he’s the son of a Black U.S. soldier, strives to acquire an American visa for himself and his family in 2016 under the Amerasian Homecoming Act, but without solid proof, his request is denied. At the same time, Dan, a veteran, is visiting the country, not telling his wife, Linda, that he’s hoping to find Kim, the Vietnamese woman he fell for while stationed there in 1969. The third thread looks back to that year and follows Kim—real name: Trang—as she and her sister, Quỳnh, head to Sài Gòn to work at a bar, chatting up soldiers to earn money to square their parents’ debts. The setup—based on Nguyễn’s dissertation research on Amerasian children of the Vietnam War—allows her to address various consequences of Americans’ presence. Phong suffers lifelong poverty, anguish over his search for his father, and racism; the novel’s title refers to one of many epithets flung his way. Trang is exploited, at times pressed into prostitution, and subjected to Dan’s moods. Dan, for his part, is carrying guilt over his abandonment of Trang and from keeping the relationship a secret from Linda. Nguyễn writes with an intimate, detailed understanding of Vietnamese women’s treatment during the war and the struggles of Amerasians seeking their parents in the present. The story’s impact is blunted somewhat by her efforts to wrap the story up tidily and by stilted dialogue. (“We share a common history that bonds us together stronger than any blood ties.”) But for a story spawned from academic research, it has the grace of a page-turner and sheds light on a neglected subject.

A well-turned tale of broken families across continents and decades.