“Dust Child” tells a riveting tale of a forgotten legacy of the Vietnam war- Amerasian children between American soldiers and Vietnamese women.

Our story begins in 2016, 41 years after the end of the Vietnam war. We meet Phong, a black Amerasian, trying to obtain American visas for himself and his family under the Amerasian Homecoming Act. Phong was abandoned at an orphanage as a child, where he was cared for by a nun, until she died. He suffers much abuse and ridicule because his skin colour marks him as a “child of the enemy” and the “dust of the earth”. In his search for his parents, Phong meets Dan, a white American veteran who returns to Vietnam in 2016, haunted by a pregnant lover he abandoned in 1969.

Simultaneously, this story takes us back to 1969, in the heat of the Vietnam war and American occupation. Sisters, Quỳnh and Trang work in their family’s rice fields while living in fear of the war, and lenders to whom their parents owe a great debt. When a family friend returns from the city, Sai Gon, having amassed wealth, these sisters follow this family friend to work.

They go to work as Sai Gon Tea Girls, bar girls who provide American soldiers with company. In exchange, these soldiers buy them glasses of tea as payment. There is also a hidden backroom where girls can offer sexual services to these soldiers for higher payment.

It is in this club where Dan meets Kim, his pregnant lover, who is later revealed as Trang. Trang falls deeply in love with Dan, and they live an idyllic life together until Dan is traumatized by the war. He abuses her, and eventually abandons her.

“I’ve been thinking … violence is a poison. When you commit violence or witness it, it rots you.”

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai from ‘Dust Child’

With these three characters, the author weaves a powerful story of complex characters who are all casualties of senseless violence. Despite the focus on Dan’s trauma, the author never loses sight of the real victims of this war- the Vietnamese and the Amerasian children left behind. She employs masterful, poetic language to convey how devastating war is to humanity. We empathize with these characters, and eventually, there is reconciliation and healing.

I was initially confused at the way Phong’s story runs parallel to Dan’s and Trang’s and was pleasantly surprised by the revelation at the end. I will say though, the first 100 pages where these characters are apart can make you give up on this story prematurely. It is a long, but worthy wait.

“There had been days when the starlight had been concealed from her eyes by clouds and storms. But she knew such light was always there. Bright and inextinguishable.”

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai from ‘Dust Child’

This author is truly one of my favourite authors. I read “The Mountains Sing” in 2021 by her, and reading “Dust Child” has solidified her as an auto-buy for me. Her novels have taught me all that I know about the Vietnam war, and pushed me to find out more of this atrocity. In Dust Child, she brings her signature poetic style to a forgotten legacy of the Vietnam war. Truly, she is proof that you can entertain and teach.