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HER: The Flame TreeHER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha


Publisher:  Gival Press, (October 1, 2023)
Category: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
Tour dates: January 16-Feb 23, 2024
ISBN:  978-1940724454
Available in Print and ebook, 280 pages

HER: The Flame Tree

Description HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha



If the fate of unrequited love survives fifty-one years, nine months, and four days in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, it leads the way for HER: The Flame Tree, a spare, remorseless love triptych that sweeps through the rich panorama of two generations of colonial and post-colonial Vietnam. The hopeless love of a young eunuch for a high-ranking concubine is one of this novel’s three stories that illuminate the oriental mystery of Vietnam, as epic as it is persevering,

Despite a rich trove of documentary films, Western readers know little of the spiritual face of Vietnam. Framed between 1915 and 1993, HER: The Flame Tree begins in Huế, the former imperial capital Vietnam. It is in the Purple Forbidden City, that Canh, the young eunuch, fulfills his vow to be near the girl of his dreams, a villager-turned imperial concubine.

The novel begins with an expatriate Vietnamese man living in the United States who journeys back to Vietnam to search for the adopted daughter of a centenarian eunuch of the Imperial Court of Huế to find out who she really is. His world takes on a new meaning after he becames a part of her life.

Phượng. Her name is the magnificent flame tree’s flowers that grace the ancient capital of Huế. Her father, mentor of Canh the young eunuch, was a hundred-year-old grand eunuch of the Imperial Court, who had adopted and raised her since she was a baby. Their peaceful world suddenly changed when one day, sometime in the early years of the Vietnam war, Jonathan Edward came into their lives. On his quest to search for his just deceased lover’s mysterious birth, there he met Phượng, an exquisite beauty.

Through the eye of her father, history is retold. Just before the fall of the French Indochina during the last dynasty of Vietnam, a young eunuch hopelessly fell in love with a high-ranking concubine. Once the eunuch had secured the concubine’s trust, it became a fatal attraction. The eunuch died. The concubine, still a virgin, lost her mind. Her father said she was possessed by the young eunuch’s spirit who had been madly in love with her.

HER: The Flame Tree does not have the flavor of historical fiction, plot-heavy and sexually graphic. Rather, it is atmospheric and impressionistic, in the style of Snow Falling on Cedars. The magnificent poinciana flowers, which grace the ancient capital of Huế, symbolize farewell in Vietnamese adolescent romance. Its symbolic image befits Phượng for her magnanimous nature and grace, and the scarlet blossoming flowers when Jonathan Edward bids Phượng farewell is beauty without sadness—Wait and Hope.

Review HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha


‘HER: The Flame Tree’ centers around the life of Phuong. She was adopted by a  eunuch of the Imperial of Huế, in Vietnam. Her name represents the flame tree’s flowers the are all around Huế.

The eunuch had invested in a noodle shop for Phuong to run as a teenager.  He tried to dissuade her, pointing that he could care for her until she marries but she had an independent spirit.  It was while she was working in her noodle shop that she met Jonathan Edward.  He was looking for the daughter of his deceased lover.

Thus begins the story of the eunuch of the last dynasty of Vietnam and his adopted daughter. It covers his young love of high-ranking concubine and how he eventually adopted his daughter, around the fall of the dynasty.

Decades later, Minh, an expat of Vietnam travels back to his home country to speak with Phuong, now an old woman. About her life and that of her father’s.

HER, brings us on a at times, beautiful but at times painful journey as we follow Phuong’s and her father’s journey through time in Vietnam.  Ha’s poetic prose captures the times and place with the force of the powerful flame tree.  He captures the beauty and brutality of life. It is so atmospheric; it just takes your breath away! I have found all of his books to be both beautiful and brutal but this may just be his best one to date! I highly recommend that you read ‘‘HER: The Flame Tree’ and if you haven’t already done so, all of his books.  He just captures the human condition, unconditionally, warts and all in a beautiful, almost spiritual way. 5-stars

About Khanh HaKhanh Ha



Award winning author Khanh Ha is a nine-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for The Ohio State University Fiction Collection Prize, Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize, Prize Americana, and The Santa Fe Writers Project. He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, The Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, The Orison Anthology Award for Fiction, The James Knudsen Prize for Fiction, The C&R Press Fiction Prize, The EastOver Fiction Prize, The Blackwater Press Fiction Prize, The Gival Press Novel Award, and The Red Hen Press Fiction Award.

Website: http://www.authorkhanhha.com
Blog: http://authorkhanhha.blogspot.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KhanhHa69784776
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorkhanhha
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/khanhha

Buy HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha

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Giveaway- HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha



This giveaway is for 2 print or ebook copies print is open to the U.S. only. Ebook is open worldwide. This giveaway ends on Feb 23, 2024 midnight, pacific time. Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only.

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Follow HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha



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HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha

HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh HaHER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha

Publisher:  Gival Press, (October 1, 2023)
Category: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
Tour dates: January 16-Feb 23, 2024
ISBN:  978-1940724454
Available in Print and ebook, 280 pages

HER: The Flame Tree

Description HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha


If the fate of unrequited love survives fifty-one years, nine months, and four days in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, it leads the way for HER: The Flame Tree, a spare, remorseless love triptych that sweeps through the rich panorama of two generations of colonial and post-colonial Vietnam. The hopeless love of a young eunuch for a high-ranking concubine is one of this novel’s three stories that illuminate the oriental mystery of Vietnam, as epic as it is persevering,

Despite a rich trove of documentary films, Western readers know little of the spiritual face of Vietnam. Framed between 1915 and 1993, HER: The Flame Tree begins in Huế, the former imperial capital Vietnam. It is in the Purple Forbidden City, that Canh, the young eunuch, fulfills his vow to be near the girl of his dreams, a villager-turned imperial concubine.

The novel begins with an expatriate Vietnamese man living in the United States who journeys back to Vietnam to search for the adopted daughter of a centenarian eunuch of the Imperial Court of Huế to find out who she really is. His world takes on a new meaning after he becames a part of her life.

Phượng. Her name is the magnificent flame tree’s flowers that grace the ancient capital of Huế. Her father, mentor of Canh the young eunuch, was a hundred-year-old grand eunuch of the Imperial Court, who had adopted and raised her since she was a baby. Their peaceful world suddenly changed when one day, sometime in the early years of the Vietnam war, Jonathan Edward came into their lives. On his quest to search for his just deceased lover’s mysterious birth, there he met Phượng, an exquisite beauty.

Through the eye of her father, history is retold. Just before the fall of the French Indochina during the last dynasty of Vietnam, a young eunuch hopelessly fell in love with a high-ranking concubine. Once the eunuch had secured the concubine’s trust, it became a fatal attraction. The eunuch died. The concubine, still a virgin, lost her mind. Her father said she was possessed by the young eunuch’s spirit who had been madly in love with her.

HER: The Flame Tree does not have the flavor of historical fiction, plot-heavy and sexually graphic. Rather, it is atmospheric and impressionistic, in the style of Snow Falling on Cedars. The magnificent poinciana flowers, which grace the ancient capital of Huế, symbolize farewell in Vietnamese adolescent romance. Its symbolic image befits Phượng for her magnanimous nature and grace, and the scarlet blossoming flowers when Jonathan Edward bids Phượng farewell is beauty without sadness—Wait and Hope.

Guest Post by Khanh Ha, Author of HER: The Flame Tree


What process do you go through in creating visual background scenes to involve your audience with the feeling they are in the story?

 I write with cinematic visuals in my head. Words must flow like a river, fast, slow at times. Cadenced words exhale emotions and breathe scents and therefore create moods. Visuals are birthed by the use of language and imagination.

The English language is cashmere to me as a writer, and, in William Faulkner’s The Bear, I found myself falling in love with the English language. His depiction of Lion, the great blue dog, is unparalleled in its sheer power of bringing an animal to life.

Imagination, though, is raw creativity without form, without substance, that ebbs and flows in your mind, leaving just sediment on its bottom until you can dredge it for fecund silt. Does language sustain imagination? Does imagination sustain language? I write from the deep well of my imagination about what I believe in, what I advocate, what I stand for, and I’m always drawn to books that speak to me in their beautiful language. It’s like looking at a woman who is both exquisite and alluring. That’s a writer’s sustenance.

Visuals are paramount in bringing a character to life. To create lively imagery of characters, I must absorb all the details from my research and let them crystalize into a glowing image full of shades and colors; and the ambiance carried in its womb will set up the mood for the characters.

Lastly, visuals are related to senses owing to the ambiance which is the sheer force in a novel. Without it, a novel feels barren. The ambiance brings a novel to life, and what flame the ambiance are tastes, touches, smells, sights, and sounds. All five. They build the mood affected visuals.

Praise HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha


“In this almost folkloric saga of a royal eunuch, his adopted daughter and the tragedies and triumphs of love in their lives from the days of the emperor’s court to the war with America, Khanh Ha takes us deeply into the heart of traditional Vietnam in a tale told in such lushly poetic, descriptive language that it immerses the reader deeply and sensually into the gorgeousness of the land, the texture and taste of food, and the complex humanity of the characters. Her: The Flame Tree is an intricately woven, seductively fascinating story of family, sacrifice, loyalty and redeeming love in the face of heart-breaking loss that breathtakingly weaves the lives of individuals we come to know and care about into the saga of Vietnamese—and American—history.” —Wayne Karlin, author of Memorial Days

“Ha evokes a visceral image of Vietnam . . .  A vivid study of a country’s fraught history and how its people struggled to make sense of it.” —Kirkus Reviews

Her: The Flame Tree is a beautiful novel, rich with evocations of natural setting in coastal Vietnam; remembered action going back more than a hundred years; and characters both extraordinary and poignantly ordinary, developed by layer upon layer of stories.”—Elizabeth Harris, judge and author of Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman

“Early in Khanh Ha’s latest novel Her: The Flame Tree, the author describes a book made of delicate leaves of gold. Such a volume would be ideal to record this shimmering and often tender tale of love, loss, and memory.” —Steve Evans, author of The Marriage of True Minds

About Khanh HaKhanh Ha


Award winning author Khanh Ha is a nine-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for The Ohio State University Fiction Collection Prize, Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize, Prize Americana, and The Santa Fe Writers Project. He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, The Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, The Orison Anthology Award for Fiction, The James Knudsen Prize for Fiction, The C&R Press Fiction Prize, The EastOver Fiction Prize, The Blackwater Press Fiction Prize, The Gival Press Novel Award, and The Red Hen Press Fiction Award.

Website: http://www.authorkhanhha.com
Blog: http://authorkhanhha.blogspot.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KhanhHa69784776
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorkhanhha
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/khanhha

Buy HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha


Amazon
Barnes&Noble
Bookshop.org

Giveaway- HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha


This giveaway is for 2 print or ebook copies print is open to the U.S. only. Ebook is open worldwide. This giveaway ends on Feb 23, 2024 midnight, pacific time. Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Follow HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha


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HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha

Campbell Sisters by Eileen Joyce DonovanThe Campbell Sisters by Eileen Joyce Donovan

Publisher:  DX Varos Publishing (March 7, 2023)
Category: Literary Fiction, British and Irish Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction
Tour Dates March 13-April 11, 2023
ISBN: 978-1955065702
Available in Print and ebook, 396 pages

Campbell Sisters

Description Campbell Sisters by Eileen Joyce Donovan


Helen Campbell is the eldest and most practical of three sisters, daughters of hard-working Irish emigrants living in New York City in the 1950s. She does what she can to keep the wild-child middle sister, Carolyn, in line and support the youngest, Peggy, as she pursues her dreams of becoming a doctor. Then Helen meets Charlie.

While it’s love at first sight for those two, Carolyn’s antics threatens to derail all the sisters’ future happiness. However, through thick and thin, the three sisters strive to prevail, though not necessarily in the ways they thought they wanted.

My Thoughts Campbell Sisters by Eileen Joyce Donovan


The Campbell Sisters takes place in 1950’s New York City.  All three sisters are in their 20s and still living with their parents in an apartment.  They are Irish Americans.

The three sisters share a room so are always pretty aware of what each are up to. Helen, the oldest sister, is pretty much in charge, as her mother has always reminded her that she is the oldest. She is also considered a spinster and the age of 25 because she is not married.

Helen works at an orphanage and takes her class to the park.  They are not allowed to bring any toys however, one of the boys sneaks a ball out and it goes sailing into the bicycle lane.  He runs after it and is hit by a bike.  The man riding the bike, Charlie, feels awful and wants to help. He insists on carrying the boy back to the orphanage with Helen and her charges.  Then he asks Helen out and waits for her until she is done working for the day.

After that day, they went out frequently. Charlie is a boxer and one night, he takes her to see a fight. The fight did not bother her however, the other thing she saw across from their seats did.  She saw her middle sister, Carolyn with her boss.  Long after Helen comes home, her sister Carolyn appears climbing into their second floor, bedroom window.  Helen confronts her.

Their parents heard and in the morning at breakfast, they confront Carolyn.  Even though the girls are grown, they have a curfew and their dad is very strict about it.  He told Carolyn that since is will not follow his rules, she will have to move out by the end of the month.  For Carolyn, she digs herself a hole, deeper and deeper.

Their youngest sister Peggy, is studying to become a doctor.  While out celebrating with Helen and Charlie one nights, She meets Charlie’s best friend and manager, Joe.  Sparks fly.

Some of what happens is predictable however, that does not detract from the novel.  It is well written and 1950’s New York is brought back to life in all it’s grandeur and some of it’s underbelly as well.  The characters are well written as well.  I felt like I was there as part of the family.  In fact, I think it would make an excellent movie!

‘The Campbell Sisters’ is a gem of a book and I highly recommend it! I give it all 5 stars.  I will be thinking of the characters for a long time to come!

About Eileen Joyce DonovanCampbell Sisters by Eileen Joyce Donovan


Eileen Joyce Donovan has been writing her entire life, in one way or another, whether it was imaginative stories for friends, or advertising copy for clients. At the persistent urging of her husband, she finally agreed to seriously edit and revise one of her stories and take the plunge. Years later, her persistence paid off and both her debut historical fiction, Promises, and her second novel, A Lady Newspaperman’s Dilemma, won prestigious awards. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies, and her essays have been included in various Chicken Soup for the Soul editions.

She lives in Manhattan, New York and is a member of Authors Guild, Women’s National Book Association, Women Fiction Writers Association, and The Historical Novel Society.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/etdonovan1
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eileen.donovan.923


Buy Campbell Sisters by Eileen Joyce Donovan


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Campbell Sisters by Eileen Joyce Donovan