Mrs. Rossi’s Dream by Khanh Ha

Publisher:  The Permanent Press (March 1, 2019)
Category: Historical Fiction, Vietnam, Literary Fiction, Multicultural
Tour dates: Mar-Apr, 2019
ISBN: 978-1579625689
Available in Print and ebook, 312 pages

Description Mrs. Rossi’s Dream by Khanh Ha

“I live in a coastal town in the deep south of the Mekong Delta. During the war this was IV Corps, which saw many savage fights. Although the battles might have long been forgotten, some places cannot forget.”

Thus begins the harrowing yet poignant story of a North Vietnamese communist defector who spends ten years in a far-flung reform prison after the war, and now, in 1987, a free man again, finds work as caretaker at a roadside inn in the U Minh region. One day new guests arrived at the inn: an elderly American woman and her daughter, an eighteen-year-old Vietnamese girl adopted at the age of five from an orphanage in the Mekong Delta before the war ended. Catherine Rossi has come to this region to find the remains of her son, a lieutenant who went missing-in-action during the war.

“Mrs. Rossi’s Dream” tells the stories of two men in time parallel: Giang, the 39-year-old war veteran; Nicola Rossi, a deceased lieutenant in the U.S. army, the voice of a spirit.

From the haunting ugliness of the Vietnam War, the stories of these two men shout, cry and whisper to us the voices of love and loneliness, barbarity and longing, lived and felt by a multitude of people from all walks of life: the tender adolescent vulnerability of a girl toward a man who, as a drifter and a war-hardened man, draws beautifully in his spare time; the test of love and faith endured by a mother whose dogged patience even baffles the local hired hand who thinks the poor old lady must have gone out of her mind; and whose determination drives her into the spooky forest, rain or shine, until one day she claims she has sensed an otherworldly presence in there with her. In the end she wishes to see, just once, a river the local Vietnamese call “The River of White Water Lilies,” the very river her son saw, now that all her hopes to find his remains die out.

Just then something happens. She finds out where he has lain buried for twenty years―and how he was killed.

Excerpt Mrs. Rossi’s Dream by Khanh Ha

I  live in a coastal town in the deep south of the Mekong Delta. During the war this was the territory of IV Corps, which saw many savage fights.

I work at a roadside inn. The owners are a couple in their late sixties. The old woman runs the inn and cooks meals for the guests. I often drive to Ông Doc, twenty kilometers south, to pick up customers when they arrive on buses, boats, or barges. Most of them come to visit the Lower U Minh National Reserve, twenty kilometers north.

I seldom see the old man. He stays mostly holed up in his room. Sometimes when his door isn’t locked, I glimpse him wandering like a specter. He and his wife had a son who served in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam. One morning I looked out the window to see the old man digging near a star fruit tree, a small figure, clad in white pajamas and a black trilby on his head. The grassy ground was dotted with bluebells, and hibiscus bled in mounds on the grass. After digging down a foot or so, he stopped. From the pocket of his pajamas he pulled out a bone. It looked like a wrist bone. He sat on his haunches and placed the bone in the hole and scooped dirt over it. After a while the old woman came out, grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him inside. The next morning, he was out there digging again. The same spot. I could hear the sound of his spade hitting the bone and saw him stop. He picked up the bone, smeared with brown dirt, and dragged his spade to the lemon tree. There were fallen lemons on the ground, deep yellow and wrinkled, and they sank with the fresh loam into the earth. He fretted about the placement of the bone, turning it this and that way.

I had to ask the old woman, and she told me that their son was killed in action somewhere in IV Corps in 1967—exactly twenty years ago. They never found his body.

One afternoon the old woman tells me to drive into town to pick up new guests at the ferry. As I ease their old Peugeot into first gear, the old woman runs out and yells, “Have you seen my husband?”

“No, ma’am.” I let the car idle.

“Can you drive down the road and look for him?”

“He could be anywhere.”

“He went down that way before.” She points toward the town beyond the tree crowns and a patch of pale blue sky.

“I’ll look for him.”

The road is empty and quiet, and I can hear the hoarse cries of storks flying overhead. I know the road well—the houses dotting the road, the dwellers’ faces as they stand in the dark doorways. Alongside the road, hummingbird flowers burst in white, their fruits long and pendulous like green beans.

Ahead I see him walking in his white pajamas. He wears the same trilby pulled down over his eyes, a brown bag clutched in his hand. He looks back nervously.

I pull up and he glances toward me, then looks the other way. I get out and take him by the elbow toward the car. He follows meekly, cradling the brown bag against his chest. The rustle of paper makes me curious. “What do you have in there, sir?”

“Where is a safe place?” he asks in his southern accent.

“For what, sir?”

He opens the top of the bag. Inside is the bone. An ox bone, I see.

Awards Mrs. Rossi’s Dream by Khanh Ha

Parts of the book were previously published in literary magazines and became finalists for the following awards:

2016 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction (Sarabande Books)

2016 Many Voices Project (New Rivers Press)

2016 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction (Prairie Schooner)

2015 William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Award (Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society)

A short story adapted from the book won the 2013 Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction (The Greensboro Review)

My Thoughts Mrs. Rossi’s Dream by Khanh Ha

This is Khanh Ha’s third novel.  I became a big fan after reading his first book, ‘Flesh’ and my fandom grew with his second book, ‘The Demon Who Peddled Longing.’  How does his third book, ‘Mrs. Rossi’s Dream’ stack up?  Read on.

Catherine Rossi is from the USA and her son, Lieutenant Nicola Rossi fought in the Vietnam War.  He was missing in action and assumed dead. 

20 years later Catherine Rossi and her adopted 18 year old Vietnamese Daughter, Chi Lan show up at an inn in the U Minh region of Vietnam.  They have come to find Nicola’s remains.  There are two main narrators of the story, Giang the caretaker at the inn and war veteran and via letters to his mother, Nicola Rossi.  Both men have harrowing stories from the war and Giang has an added layer of information since he survived.

Khanh Ha has a literary style that is fresh and so nuanced.  He takes a deep dive into his characters and subject.  A Vietnamese American, he was a child in Vietnam when the war broke out. I think this experience adds to his style.  He has a dreamy like quality that most likely comes from being a young child when he lived in Nam.  There are common themes of loneliness, love, longing, compassion, and brutality in his books.  His first two books deal with post war Vietnam, while ‘Mrs. Rossi’s Dream’ during and after the war.

How does ‘Mrs. Rossi’s Dream’ stack up?  For starters, I could not put it down and it kept me up into the wee hours of night!  The characters grabbed me and pulled me into their lives.  Ha has a way of making me forget that I am reading a book. He writing is beautiful even when writing about brutality.  For that reason, I can’t say if it is better than his first two novels, I love them all! I read ‘Flesh’ when it was published in 2012 and ‘The Demon Who Peddled Longing’ in 2014. Yet, it as if I read them both yesterday.  The characters haunt me and I just can’t stop thinking about them.  I am sure that will be the case with ‘Mrs. Rossi’s Dream’ as well.  ‘Mrs. Rossi’s Dream’ is a must read for both literary fiction lovers and readers who enjoy books that take place in Vietnam.  I give it 5 stars!

I received the eBook for my honest review.

About Khanh Ha

Award winning author, Khanh Ha is the author of Flesh (Black Heron Press) and The Demon Who Peddled Longing (Underground Voices). He is a seven-time Pushcart nominee, a Best Indie Lit New England nominee, twice a finalist of The William Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Award, and the recipient of Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, and Greensboro Review’s Robert Watson Literary Prize in fiction. The Demon Who Peddled Longing was honored by Shelf Unbound as a Notable Indie Book. Ha graduated from Ohio University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

Website: http://www.authorkhanhha.com
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Giveaway Mrs. Rossi’s Dream by Khanh Ha

This giveaway is for the choice 3 print copies or ebook copies of the book , 1 copy per each of 3 winners.  Print is available to Canada and the U.S. only but ebook is available worldwide. This giveaway ends on May 8, 2019 at midnight pacific time.  Entries are accepted via Rafflecopter only.

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