A Bend in the River by Libby Fishcer Hellman
Libby Fischer Hellman’s latest novel A Bend in the River centers on two young South Vietnamese sisters whose bucolic childhoods in the Mekong Delta change forever when U.S. soldiers invade their small village one morning in March 1968 to hunt down Viet Cong.
The book opens with a question: “Is there a warning the moment before life shatters into pieces?” Before launching into the inciting incident, Hellman offers a brief yet lovely visual of normal life, as the two sisters scrub their family’s clothes against the rocks of the Mekong River. Seventeen-year-old Trang Tâm, about to graduate from the Catholic school two villages away, worries about how she will continue her studies at University while the beautiful 14-year-old Linh Mai hopes for an arranged marriage to a handsome son of a wealthy sampan builder.
Within seconds, whiffs of smoke signal imminent danger. The two rush back to town in search of their parents and little brother, but all they’ve known of their sheltered life vanishes in a horrible flash.
With a combination of Tâm’s practical maturity and Mai’s people skills, the two girls manage to steal a sampan and paddle their way toward Saigon, not without help from other kind souls. But once they arrive in the big city, their philosophies toward life clash.
Tâm respects rules and sees the burden of keeping the two of them safe as the most important thing, whereas Mai feels confined by Tâm’s spartan mentality and prefers thinking on her feet and taking risks. They go separate ways.
SISTERS FACE DIVERGENT PATHS
Mai becomes a hostess at the Stardust Lounge and Tâm goes to the jungle to train and fight with the Viet Cong. For the next ten years, neither one is aware of whether the other is still alive as they struggle to survive a war that breaks their country in half. As happens in civil war, no one trusts the other side, and even two sisters who love each other wonder if the other can be trusted. Will they ever reunite? We are compelled to read on.
A Bend in the River represents, for Hellman, a polished segue into historical fiction after her previous work as an accomplished writer of mystery and suspense. Her well-honed sense of pace shines through every chapter, whether we are with Tâm in a Vietnamese jungle planting explosives with Viet Cong guerilla fighters or in a smoky bar with Mai as she learns the tricky bar-girl trade of befriending beleaguered and lonely soldiers whose own sense of ethics have been sorely tried in a difficult war.
Spanning ten years between 1968 and 1978, the chapters alternate between Tâm’s and Mai’s points of view and take place sometimes in Saigon, sometimes in South Vietnam, and finally in the United States.
Hellman’s simple but elegant prose conveys lush and colorful settings and makes us feel like we are there: “One or two brave stars glimmered in the purple sky. The monsoon rains that afternoon had rinsed the air, and a fresh breeze promised a cooler night.” And this: “Gray clouds shoved their way across the sky, first hiding, then revealing a full moon. Silvery moonlight bounced off the clouds, intensifying the light on the ground.” These passages make us thirsty to see Vietnam with our own eyes.
ALTERNATE PERSPECTIVE ON THE VIETNAM WAR
The Vietnam War as it has been taught in American history books — over 58,000 American lives lost in a war we did not win — is imagined quite differently here, from the gritty and intensely personal perspective of the Vietnamese people. The fact that Hellman opens many of the chapters with a brief mention of the war as we Westerners knew it provides useful and grounding context for the fictional story.
Most importantly, however, she shows us the complexity of civil war, where it becomes challenging — and perhaps not even useful — to sort out the bad guys from the good guys, because the varied challenges of each moment make heroes on both sides. We see, in Hellman’s words, “The vicious mendacity of some. The unexpected generosity of others.” With a broader brush, she notes how “This country, torn apart by endless war, had made captives of them all, whether they were behind bars or not. Whether they lived in the North or the South, the Vietnamese people were controlled by the whims of greedy politicians and military commanders with grandiose plans but not much else.”
A Bend in the River is a thought-provoking read. It offers interesting nuance and added depth to a war we thought we knew but maybe did not entirely understand.
