From Library Journal
In this delightful dual memoir, a Navy riverboat commander and a young Vietnamese tell their personal stories. In 1967, Captain Huchthausen, on a Mekong River patrol, rescues a severely wounded Vietnamese girl, Nguyen Thi Lung. The unit arranged for her treatment and education. After the Tet offensive, Nguyen loses contact with the Americans, eking out a marginal life in the shadows. In 1982 a smuggled letter to a UPI reporter initiates the drama that leads to her entry into the United States. In alternating chapters, Huchthausen and Nguyen recall the war years, while she relates her often frightening experience in postwar Vietnam. The format is refreshing, with Lloyd James and Marguerite Gavin doing fine jobs with their respective narrations. This counterpoint as well as the theme of human triumph over adversityAphysical, political, and bureaucraticAcreates a genuine story with universal appeal.AJames Dudley, Westhampton Beach, NY
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
From AudioFile
In 1967 a young American riverboat commander on the Mekong River rescued a wounded Vietnamese child, and thereafter both lives were quietly woven together. The book that results alternates his story with hers. Beginning in terror and heartache, like most stories of Vietnam, it ends, finally, in triumph, resulting in a refreshingly human yet candid assessment of American involvement there. Lloyd James starts to read Huchthausen's narrative with the crisp, assured voice of an American naval officer, but suspense takes over as the two lives intersect. Marguerite Gavin, by contrast, is intimate and quiet as she reads Nguyen and the various other voices of Vietnam. Both voices, like Vietnam itself, linger in our memory long after. P.E.F. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine
--This text refers to the
Audio Cassette
edition.
