Khahn Ha: A Mothers Tale: Book Tour

A Mother’s Tale and Other Stories by Khanh Ha: On Tour

A Mother’s Tale and Other Stories by Khanh Ha

Publisher: C&R Press (October 15, 2021)
Category: Linked Short Stories, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction
Tour dates: October 11-November 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1949540239
Available in Print and ebook, 150 pages

Description Mother’s Tale and Other Stories by Khanh Ha

A Mother’s Tale is a tale of salvaging one’s soul from received and inherited war-related trauma. Within the titular beautiful story of a mother’s love for her son is the cruelty and senselessness of the Vietnam War, the poignant human connection, and a haunting narrative whose set ting and atmosphere appear at times otherworldly through their land scape and inhabitants.

Captured in the vivid descriptions of Vietnam’s country and culture are a host of characters, tortured and maimed and generous and still empathetic despite many obstacles, including a culture wrecked by losses. Somewhere in this chaos readers will find a tender link between the present-day survivors and those already gone. Rich and yet buoyant with a vision-like quality, this collection shares a common theme of love and loneliness, longing and compassion, where beauty is discovered in the moments of brutality, and agony is felt in ecstasy.

My comments:

The Vietnam War ended for the United States in 1975, but for many who were personally touched by the conflict, the results lasted a much longer time, and may even persist to the present day. 

The stories of Khanh Ha in A Mother's Tale are testiment to the endurance of the memories of the history of the war in Vietnam, of the soldiers on both sides and of their families and loved ones who survived. 

Though frank and brutal in their honesty, the stories are a permanent reminder of the horrors of  war and of the consequences the mothers, families, and survivors had to face. 

The book includes descriptions of men injured and maimed by the war,  whose survival depend so much on families and their ability to cope and endure. They also include the voices of the soldiers themselves, both American and Vietnamese, both North and South. 

Mrs. Rossi in Mrs. Rossi's Dream is also a survivor. In her story, she has come to Vietnam from the United States to try to find the bones of her deceased soldier son in a dense, swampy forest, filled with the bones of so many others on both sides of the conflict. Hers is only a dream in the face of the stark reality that time plays.

It is not easy to read these accounts, but it is important that they exist, to remind us of a time in history from which we can all learn important lessons.  

Praise for A Mother’s Tale and Other Stories by Khanh Ha:

WINNER C&R PRESS 2021 FICTION AWARD

Follow Mother’s Tale and Other Stories by Khanh Ha

Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus Oct 11 Kickoff & Excerpt

Sal Bound 4 Escape Oct 12 Guest Review

Jas International Book Reviews Oct 14 Review

Bee Book Pleasures Oct 15 Review & Interview

Cleopatra Amazon Oct 18 Review

Katy Celticlady’s Reviews Oct 20 Guest Review & Excerpt

Suzie M. My Tangled Skeins Book Reviews Oct 22 Guest Review

Lu Ann Rockin’ Book Reviews Oct 23 Review & Guest Post

Don S. Amazon Nov 1 Review

Harvee BookBirdDog (Book Dilettante) Nov 4 Review

Nancy Reading Avidly Nov 9 Review

Serena Savvy Verse & Wit Nov 10 Review

Betty Toots Book Reviews Nov 12 Review & Interview

Donna T Amazon Nov 18 Review

Denise D. Amazon Nov 19 Review

Ilana WildWritingLife Nov 22 Review & Guest Post

Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus Nov 23 Review

vailable now, it is for pre-sale: C&R Press https://www.crpress.org/shop/a-mothers-tale-other-stories/

Book Tour/Review: Mrs. Rossi's Dream by Khanh Ha

Mrs. Rossi’s Dream by Khanh Ha

Publisher:  The Permanent Press (March 1, 2019)
Category: Historical Fiction, Vietnam, Literary Fiction, Multicultural
Print and ebook, 312 pages

About: Mrs. Rossi, a retired high school principal from Maryland, travels to Vietnam with her adopted Vietnamese daughter Chi Lan, and is taken around the countryside by the narrator of the book, Giang, who works at their roadside inn as a driver.

During the Vietnam War, Giang defected from the north  and was sent to a reform camp for ten years, after which he served in the South Vietnamese army. In the book, he gives tours of the area to Mrs. Rossi and helps her to search for the remains of her son, an American who died in 1966-1967 during the war.

The exact place where Mrs. Rossi's son died is unknown, so Giang takes her to Military Zone 9, an approximate and possible location. It is now a vast wet woodland where families from the north and south have come to search for the bones of their dead. 

Giang tries to subtly tell Mrs. Rossi that soldiers' remains, after 20 years, are now scattered bones, and not identifiable one from the other in the jungle environment. Still, she persists.

Recommendation: In the book, we learn about the history of Vietnam and the consequences of colonization and occupation by the Chinese and the  French, and then by the Americans during the war. We learn also about the beauty of the land, the river, white water lilies floating on the water, the dramatic contrast with death and destruction of the war. 

We learn about the Vietnamese point of view of the war, their experiences, their language, history, the ghosts and the bones scattered throughout the country.  

In the end, Giang makes a confession to Mrs. Rossi, and they both weep for their losses, for their sadness, and both come to find sorrow, forgiveness, and common ground. 

Summary: A moving story, both sad and exhilarating in parts,  that is also a history and a description of a country torn by war and occupation over centuries, and an emotional journey of a mother's search for and memories of her son.

Rating: 5/5

Thanks to Teddy Rose and Virtual Author Book Tours for an ebook for this book tour. 

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
Twitter: https://twitter.com/authorkhanhha
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authorkhanhha
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/khanhha

Mrs. Rossi’s Dream available at Amazon, BarnesandNoble

Enter to win a print copy or an ebook: https://www.virtualauthorbooktours.com/mrs-rossis-dream-by-khanh-ha-on-tour/

Linked to War Through the Generations Book Challenge

Book Review: The Demon Who Peddled Longing by Khanh Ha

The Demon Who Peddled Longing

Title: The Demon Who Peddled Longing by Khanh Ha
Published November 21, 2014; Underground Voices
Genre: multicultural fiction, literary fiction

Opening sentences: Sometime in the night, the woman woke. The wind had died down and the rain had stopped and now she could hear something bang against the piles of the house. Sitting up in her cot, she listened.

Nineteen-year-old Nam of Vietnam, in the Plain of Reeds, takes a long journey after he is left homeless and without family when his uncle's fishing boat sinks in an accident, killing all the others on board. Nam finds employment with two different women in the flooded plain, fishing for them to earn his keep. He moves on to the coast and the seaside, in a determined quest to find the two brothers who had assaulted and murdered his cousin, his first love. His memory of his cousin drives him to try to exact revenge.

Lyrically descriptive, the book takes you to an unfamiliar land that gradually becomes more and more real. I was fascinated not only by the flooded plain of reeds, the taxing lives of the river fishermen, the intriguing preparation of fish and food, but also by the religious beliefs and the beliefs in spirits and ghosts.

This is almost a coming of age story as much as an odyssey, and a story of a young man's unholy pilgrimage to seek retribution for the wrong done to the young woman, his cousin. How he changes and matures toward the end of his journey is an intriguing part of the novel.

I enjoyed the writing, the plot, characterizations, and the cultural context. I heartily recommend The Demon Who Peddled Longing for its insight into character as well as for its fascinating story and setting.

Khanh Ha is the author of Flesh (2012, Black Heron Press) and The Demon Who Peddled Longing (November 2014, Underground Voices). He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and the recipient of Greensboro Review’s 2014 Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction. His work has appeared in Waccamaw Journal, storySouth, Greensboro Review, Saint Ann’s Review, Permafrost Magazine, Tayo Literary Magazine, Printer's Devil Review, Mount Hope, Thrice Fiction, and other fine magazines. Visit him at http://www.authorkhanhha.com
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Thanks to Virtual Author Book Tours and the author for a review galley of this book. See more reviews and the tour schedule. 

Author Khanh Ha, guest post

Welcome to Khanh Ha, author of the historical novel Flesh (Black Heron Press, 2012) set in early 20th century Vietnam. He gives us the background and inspiration for his book and the family history that impels this story.  He also discusses his upcoming and second novel.
Flesh

The Ideas and Inspiration Behind It

by Khanh Ha

Flesh, is set in Tonkin (now northern Vietnam) at the turn of the 20th century. It tells the story of a sixteen-year-old boy who witnesses the execution, by beheading of his father, a notorious bandit and sets out to recover his father’s head, and then finds the man who betrayed his father to the authorities.

A coming-of-age story of brutal self-awakening and also a tender love story, takes the reader into places, both dark and wonderful, in the human condition where allies are not always your friends, true love hurts, and your worst enemy can bring you the most solace. As its author, I was asked what inspired me to write about this specific subject.

There was an image formed in my mind after I read a book called War and Peace in Hanoi and Tonkin, which was written by a French military doctor. In one chapter he depicted an execution by capital punishment. The scene took place on a wasteland outside Hanoi. This bandit was beheaded for his crime while the onlookers, some being his relatives with children, watched in muted fascination and horror. While reading it, I imagined a boy—his son—was witnessing the decapitation of his father by the hand of the executioner. I pictured him and his mother as they collected the body without the head which the government would display at the entrance of the village his father had looted. I thought what if the boy later set out to steal the head so he could give his father an honorable burial. What if he got his hand on the executioner’s sabre and used it to kill the man who betrayed his father for a large bounty. However, it really started with a story within my family.  My mom told me that my grandfather was one of the last mandarins of the Hue Court, circa 1930.

At that time the Vietnamese communists were coming into power. They condemned any person a traitor, who worked either for the French or the Hue Court. So my grandpa was a traitor in their eye. One day news came to him that a communist gathering was to be held in one of the remote villages from Hue. He set out to that village with some of his bodyguards to punish the communists. Unfortunately, news leaked out about his trip. He was ambushed on the road—his bodyguards were killed—and he was beheaded. The communists threw his body into a river.

My grandma hired a witch doctor to look for his headless body. Eventually the witch doctor found it. They were able to identify his body based on the ivory name tablet in his tunic. My grandma hired someone to make a fake head out of a coconut shell wrapped in gilded paper and buried my grandpa on the Ngu Binh Mountain. The beheading of grandpa surfaced again while I was reading the decapitation scene in War and Peace in Hanoi and Tonkin.

I spend much, much time in researching before I write. I’m a perfectionist and the harshest critic of myself. I have to know everything about what I’m going to write—well, sort of—before I ever pen the first word. Indeed much research was done before I felt dead sure about writing it.

More than once I was asked if I’m currently busy with a work-in-progress.

Yes, I’m about done with my next novel. But I rarely talk about what I’m working on. It may sound like a hard-line stance. But well, I can give you a harmless description. When I was still a struggling young writer, I came across a very old Vietnamese magazine article written about a centenarian eunuch of the Imperial Court of Hue. He was already dead the year the story was published, circa 1966. Two years before I was born. A sketchy story whose facts were gleaned from the eunuch’s adopted daughter, that ended with a small halftone photograph of her portrait. I put the article away. But I couldn’t put the story away, even months after. It dawned on me then that it wasn’t the story.

It was the face in the photograph. I traveled to Hue, Vietnam in the summer of 1991. I was 23. I went with her image in the photograph and when I finally met her, the eunuch’s daughter, that image hadn’t changed. She was someone like a forbidden love to a young man half her age. The first time she gave me a glimpse of her past from her spotted memory, it was in a sugarcane field where two decades earlier, her lover—a young American—had died in her arms.

Thanks to the author for this very interesting post. For reviews of his book, visit Virtual Author Book Tours.

About the book:  
The title refers to temptation-the temptation of the flesh. But it refers equally to the obligations of kinship, the connections between us and those to whom we are related, even if we would choose not to be. 

Khanh Ha was born in Hue, the former capital of Vietnam. During his teen years, he began writing short stories, which won him several awards in the Vietnamese adolescent magazines. He graduated from Ohio University with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism. FLESH (Black Heron Press, June 2012) is his first novel (literary fiction).

Visit the author at: http://www.authorkhanhha.com

Thanks to Teddy Rose at Virtual Author Book Tours for this guest post by the author.

To see my July 26, 2012 comments on the book, visit my Review.

Book Review: FLESH: A Novel by Khanh Ha

Flesh Title: Flesh: A Novelby Khanh Ha
Black Heron Press: June 15, 2012; hardcover
Genre: historical, literary fiction
Objective rating: 4/5

I blinked away wet stars in my eyes. "I want my daddy's skull back." 

"Daddy's skull? the older boy said, and then tapped the skull with his pipe. "This?"

About the book:

Set in Tonkin (now North Vietnam) in the early 20th century, the book follows young Tai, who as a child witnessed the beheading of his father who was accused of being an outlaw. Tai's father was known as a bandit but was something of a Robin Hood, who helped those around him. He was betrayed by someone in his band of outlaws, someone whose name Tai does not know. As a dutiful son, he recovers the skull of his father from the rival village where the execution took place, and is helped by a boatman and his daughter to escape.

Tai makes a pact with a geomancer to find a desirable and auspicious burial site for his father's and his brother's bodies, as Tai discovers that a good burial site can mean prosperity in the future for himself, his mother, and the future members of his family.

The novel follows the young man as he becomes a servant to the geomancer in the city and then finds a patron who buys the burial site for his family and bestows other favors on him.  Tai later discovers who betrayed his father and what fate has in store for him.

Comments: While it was slow going in the middle, the book picks up toward the end and I was quite engrossed in finding out what would happen to Tai and the girl he thinks he loves. The times are hard, people are poor, but the natural surroundings bring peace and comfort, as the writer shows in his lyrical and descriptive writing.

The novel is set during the time when Tonkin was under French colonial rule. The relationships between the French, the resident Chinese, and the Tonkinese (Vietnamese) are all featured in the book, which gives you a good feel for the culture, the times and its conditions.

I rated the book 4/5 and recommend it for those interested in Vietnam during this period of history.


Khanh Ha was born in Hue, the former capital of Vietnam. During his teen years he began writing short stories which won him several awards in Vietnamese adolescent magazines. He graduated from Ohio University with a bachelor's degree in Journalism. He is at work on a new novel.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours and the publisher for a complimentary review copy of this book. Click for other reviews