A Bend In The River
Tâm and Mai Trang are sisters, aged seventeen and fourteen, living with their family in Vietnam. In March 1968, the sisters are washing clothes by the Mekong River when they smell smoke. They run back to their village to see American soldiers searching for hidden Viet Cong and lighting the village on fire after herding the townspeople into the square. All the village animals lie slaughtered. As the girls hide in the bush and watch their home burn, everyone in the village is shot, including their father, mother, and baby brother. They escape and set out on a boat journey to Saigon, where they struggle to make a life for themselves.
The girls want different things from life, and eventually their disagreements divide them. They part ways and have no contact for many years. Tâm’s hatred toward the Americans for the massacre of her family and her idealistic political views make it easy for the Viet Cong to recruit her. She disappears into the jungle to join them. Hellmann shows the brutal life of the Viet Cong living in the tunnels and fighting a guerilla war against the Americans. Mai is non-political, impulsive, and wants glamour in her life. She ends up working in a GI bar, where she learns to speak English. She relies on the American soldiers’ generosity and learns some harsh life lessons when she falls in love.
As Tâm and Mai mature into women, their experiences mold and shape them. Hellmann gives us a wealth of historical background and facts around the Vietnam War. These parts stand out from the narrative more as a history lesson and are not seamlessly folded into the story. Nevertheless, this is a notable book about the Vietnam War, seen by two sisters in dissimilar situations, and worthy of the reader’s time.
