Description
War and loss dog the heels of her and her family, yet Trang Sen, the Vietnamese heroine of Sarah-Ann Smith’s new novel, is defiant.
Rebellious and headstrong even as a child, she struggles to make more of her life than seems possible. As she moves from her parents’ rice farm to the streets and alleys of Saigon, her world opens up — but as new paths become visible, others are shut off. Caught between her own dreams and the needs of her family, between her love for learning and the excitement of war-time Saigon, Trang Sen embarks on a journey that requires heartbreaking choices.
Americans tend to remember the Vietnam War as something painful that happened to us. We think much less about the experience or the much greater pain endured by the Vietnamese. In showing us that tragic time through the eyes of a Vietnamese woman growing up during the war, Smith also shows how Vietnamese lives were formed and deformed by that long travail, and about the kinds of choices so many were forced to make amid terrible circumstances.
South Carolina native Sarah-Ann Smith’s debut novel, Trang Sen, is rapidly becoming a popular choice for book clubs, whose readers are uninhibited in their praise. “Really a pageturner. I got nothing done yesterday and not a lot of sleep either.” ~ “I finished your book and … my only regret was that it was the last page.” ~ “I read your book over the weekend and could hardly put it down. It was captivating and enlightening.” ~ “You kept me up until 1:45 this morning!” ~ “It has all the makings of a best seller.”
The book, in the words of Asheville Citizen-Times reviewer Carole Currie, “rings true” because Smith “puts a human face on a war that seems distant now, capturing the painful suffering of the Vietnamese and the problems and confusion faced by the ones who were brought to the United States.”
Sarah-Ann Smith’s passion for Asia led her to earn a degree in international relations and Asian studies and to a career in the U.S. diplomatic corps. Her tours of duty took her to Taiwan to study Mandarin Chinese and to the American Consulate in Hong Kong as well as within the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the U.S. State Department. Her interest in Southeast Asia was originally piqued by encounters with a number of Asian students and their critiques of U.S. policy at the height of the Vietnam war. Her professional and personal focus on Asian political and cultural life led her to write about it in fictional form in this, her first novel.
Smith’s life after the Foreign Service has focused on writing and teaching. In addition to Trang Sen, she has published numerous op-ed pieces and has taught China- and Southeast Asia-related courses at universities in Maryland and North and South Carolina. Upon retirement she moved to Asheville, N.C. for fourteen years, and now lives in Spartanburg, S.C.
