Dust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai was based on her doctoral research on Vietnamese Amerasians. The seven years of research shows in the detail about the history, culture and Vietnam. The story spans multiple timelines between 1969 and 2016.

Vietnamese Amerasian, Nguyễn Tấn Phong’s application for an American visa for himself and his family under the Amerasian Homecoming Act is denied. He was caught out having had applied before and attempting to include people he was not related to. 

During the Vietnam War, tens of children were born into relationships between American soldiers and Vietnamese women. Tragic circumstances separated most of these Amerasian children from their fathers and, later their mothers. Many have not found each other again.

Soon after Phong meets an American couple, Dan and Linda who (according to Linda) have come to Vietnam as therapy for her veteran husband’s trauma. Linda doesn’t know that Dan wants to find Kim (real name Trang), a woman he had kept as a mistress while he was a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam war. Phong undertakes to help him and act as the couple’s tour guide.

She had tried to live an honest life, but the war had given her no choice. It had forced her to make up a version of herself which was acceptable to others. In a way, making up stories had been the basis of her survival and her success.

The story is told on two timelines – Phong and Dan’s present-day narration and Kim’s war-time story when she was and her sister worked to earn money to pay off their parents debts by keeping American soldiers company. Dan leaves Vietnam, abandoning a pregnant Kim.

Everyone came from dust and would one day return to dust. Life is transitory, after all.

Soon the three storylines converge.

What I found most interesting about Dust Child is that it tells the Vietnam war experience from the perspective of ordinary Vietnamese people both during the war and afterward, shining a light on the lasting effects.