Blossoms on the Wind
Juliet LacMainstream romance
Available from Kensington Books
ISBN: 978-0-8065-3114-1
April 2009
| Juliet Lac is a Vietnamese native, a survivor of the Vietnam War. In this autobiographical account she tells us in heart wrenching detail what it was like to live through those times. Most of us have never experienced the hell of war with missiles flying over our head every night. No matter what our income level few of us have had to cope with the type of poverty villagers in that country lived with whether war was raging or not. The author walks us through her village, her life, and her relationships in a way few others could.
At the age of eleven she and her mother were able to buy passage on a boat to take them away from their homeland towards a better life. She tells us of her experiences on the overloaded vessel that took them to a refugee camp in Malaysia. The newspaper articles we may have read about shiploads of people trying to escape the communist regime come alive as we see what the journey was like for someone who lived through it. We live through the refugee camp and her struggles to cope with fears and the losses in her life with her. Throughout the book Ms. Lac makes no attempt to cover how she lived, the decisions she made, whether good, bad or indifferent in the eyes of others. It's hard not to wonder what choices we may have made as we read the story of her life. But we didn't walk in her shoes so it's impossible to know. This reviewer doesn't think I would have survived as well as she did and I think many others may feel the same. The book is a revelation about this woman's life and that of the real Vietnamese people that all the movies and previous books about the Vietnam ¡Conflict' didn't cover. It took a lot of courage to be as honest in the telling as Ms. Lac is and I'm glad she's shared the story of her life with us.
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Reviewer: Dee Dailey |
