And today a teasing extract with a giveaway!
Synopsis
A gripping, emotional saga of family secrets and the power of love, set during the Vietnam War…
North Carolina, 2015: Nicole has always idolised her successful father, Ed. But on his deathbed, he reveals a devastating secret he’d guarded for a lifetime. He served in the Vietnam War, fell in love, and fathered a child there. A child he never had the courage to acknowledge.
Huế, South Vietnam, 1968: While her village is rocked by the explosions of the Tet offensive, seventeen-year-old Mai finds a wounded American hiding in her family’s chicken shed. Mai faces an agonising choice. Will she report the soldier to the Viet Cong, who have a stranglehold on the village, or will she risk her life and that of her family to help him?
In 2015, Nicole embarks on a journey into the unknown, travelling to Vietnam on a quest to uncover her father’s long-buried truths. Helped by Greig, an ageing Vietnam vet and his journalist son, Long, she delves into the shocking world her father wanted to forget, plumbing depths of resilience and courage she never knew she possessed.
Will Nicole find her long-lost sister, or will the Vietnam War guard its shameful secrets for ever?
If you are a fan of page-turning, emotional historical fiction like The Women, The Home Front and The Mountains Sing, you will love Mandarin Road.
Mandarin Road is a dual-timeline, standalone book by bestselling historical fiction author, Ann Bennett. Discover this moving, compelling read today.
Extract
This is the beginning of Chapter 4. In the first chapters, we see Ed, a US Marine, in the thick of the battle for Huếin January 1968, wounded in an explosion and dragging himself across the fields towards a village to hide from the Viet Cong. Years later, on his deathbed, Ed reveals to his American daughter, Nicole, that he served in Vietnam, fell in love and fathered a child, a daughter, Kim, there. Finding a letter from the mother of the child, Mai, amongst her father’s belongings after his death, Nicole travels to Vietnam, to Huế, to try to track down her half-sister, Kim. Chapter 4 is the start of Mai’s story.
MANDARIN ROAD
Chapter 4
THÔN SÔNG, HUẾ, VIETNAM, DECEMBER, 1967
MAI WAS JUST seventeen when the Viet Cong first came to her sleepy village in the Perfume River valley. Until that point her family had lived a simple life – her father owned some fields where they farmed rice and kept a few animals. Mai and her younger sister, Phuong, would help her parents in the fields when they weren’t attending school in nearby Huế. Her life had been undisturbed by the events in the outside world and barely affected by the fighting elsewhere in Vietnam, although her father had a wireless set and would listen to the developments of the American War on the evening news. Each night when it ended, he would switch off the radio and turn back to his family, shaking his head, a grave look in his eyes.
Despite those daily reminders, it felt to Mai as if the war was something taking place a long way from home. Ever since she could remember there had been reports of fighting in her country, against the French, against the communists, against the Americans. It had been the constant backdrop to her life.
American troops were stationed in Huế, on a compound to the south of the Perfume River and in other pockets throughout the town. One of the big hotels on the river, the Huong Giang Hotel, housed South Vietnamese Army officers in its palatial rooms. Mai would see them going in and out of the grand entrance in their smart uniforms, and the hotel’s dock was used as a landing ramp for American boats. Crossing the bridge beside it to walk to school in the mornings, Mai and Phuong would watch, fascinated, as flat-bottomed, landing craft would pull up there and unload their cargoes of tall, rangy soldiers with their pale skins and pale hair. There were often American tanks on the streets and soldiers in the cafésand bars too. Mai, along with the rest of the population of Huế, got so used to their presence they barely noticed them any more.
The other regular reminders that the country was at war were the American helicopters that flew over the village, sometimes so low they would whip up the dust on the ground and flatten the grass in the fields. The village boys would leave their games and run out into the clearing, waving and shouting. A couple of times they’d flown over the nearby forest, spraying the trees with chemicals. The villagers had stood and watched, wondering what it meant, glad that at least the Americans hadn’t sprayed their crops when they’d passed over.
But when a unit of Viet Cong entered the village with their rifles towards the end of 1967, their peaceful life changed for ever.
It was early evening, the orange sun had started to sink in the sky, and Mai was tending the chickens in the shed on the far edge of the rice field. She fed them the vegetable peelings from the family’s evening meal, as she always did, and made sure their water trough was topped up from a nearby stream.
She became aware that something was wrong when she came out of the shed. The buffalo were moving across the field towards her as one, which they never did, and it was clear to Mai that something must have disturbed them. Scanning the side of the field the animals were lumbering away from, she noticed movement in the opposite corner. Her heart thumped at what she saw: a ragged-looking man carrying a rifle on his shoulder, crawling
on all fours along the bank like a crab, moving quickly and deftly. She looked behind him and realised with a shock that it wasn’t just one man, it was a whole line of them, strung out along the field, all making straight for the village. Her mouth went dry, and her heart raced. She knew she should run back to the house and warn her family, but she was rooted to the spot with terror.
Despite the fear, she knew she couldn’t just stand there and watch it happen. She took a deep breath and forced her legs to move. She ran back along the bank of the field towards the village as fast as she could, and hurried up the front steps when she reached her house.
‘Ma! Ba!’ she yelled, panting from the run. ‘Phuong!’ She ran inside.
Her father was bent over the radio as he always was at that time of day. He looked up and frowned. He didn’t like to be interrupted. Her mother and Phuong were washing the dishes in a bowl in the corner that served as a kitchen. They turned round and stared at her.
‘Some soldiers are coming. Quick.’
‘Soldiers?’ Her father’s eyebrows shot up.
‘They are Vietnamese, but not South Vietnamese,’ she said. ‘Viet Cong,’ her father said, and quickly switched off the radio. Mai saw the panic in his eyes. He didn’t know what to do. ‘Maybe we should hide,’ she suggested.
Her father strode to the door and pushed aside the rope screen. When he turned back into the room his face was pale. ‘Too late,’ he said.
Mai went to him and peeped over his shoulder. She gasped. They were there already; the men she’d seen crawling across the field. Now they were walking down the middle of the clearing between the houses, pointing their guns all around them. It sent a chill through her to see them. Most disturbing of all, the leader was pushing the village headman along at the front of the column, prodding him with his rifle as he stumbled.
The giveaway
Giveaway to Win a paperback copy of The Bookseller of Kathmandu by Ann Bennett (Open to UK & Europe Only)
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Tizi’s Book Review 