My third novel is split into two completely different time periods. Here’s a short excerpt about Vietnamese villagers, caught in the complexities of war at the tail-end of WWII, in Tonkin, French Indochina – 1945.

The long hard sorrow doesn’t end easy in a place like Tonkin, but sometimes an epic struggle that demands justice dissipates just as easily as it starts when one too many deaths make one appreciative of what one already has. At some point, loss seems acceptable and further loss unbearable. Death has a commanding grip on reality in a part of the world where a meager existence is hope enough to move on, marry, plant rice, have children, and etch out a bigger patch of paddy for the next generation.The life of one more Frenchmen suddenly took on an insignificance. Their neighbor’s business was too great to talk about, too shameful to mention, too harmful to ponder, and too hopeless to do anything about. Gossip seemed like wasted breath and staring merely burnt holes in their fragile eyes, and so they blinked, turned from the fury, and went quietly back to their homes away from the madness. Even the characters in the house, playing out the complexities of war on a grand scale, had nothing to say and sat on the floor with insipid looks on their faces.