Fall from Grace

Deprivation and suffering finally trickled up to the aristocrats, causing Thong and his family to walk away from their ancestral homeland, taking only one suitcase each, after the Vietnamese communists had been given the northern half of the country by the Geneva Accords in 1954. In the South, living on the bleak outskirts of Saigon, the Phams were reduced to desperation, first running a dark and greasy noodle shop that failed, then a country inn that became a popular whorehouse. Thong's father, once a dashing playboy with fine clothes and a nobleman's languid manner, degenerated into a hopeless opium addict who never managed to rise from his lounge or emerge from his haze.

A bookish and unathletic boy who felt awkward next to his polished, debauched father, Thong found comfort in the classroom and dreamed of being a scholar and teacher. His mother encouraged him, and together they buried a champagne bottle in her private garden on the estate in the north -- to be opened upon his passing of middle school graduation exams.

Thong's mother is the nourishing spirit of the book, a refined woman who left behind a treasure of good feeling and noble ideas to help carry her son through. Just 31 when she died, she hovered over his life for years after, a kind of angel who guided Thong and kept him alive.

"Mother had taught me that the eaves of heaven had a way of turning in cycles, of dealing both blows and recompenses. For every devastating flood, there followed a bountiful crop. For every long stretch of flawless days, there waited a mighty storm just below the horizon."

By the story's end, Thong has witnessed cruelty, waste and government corruption, and has endured prison, torture, and the deaths and humiliations of one friend after another. All he has left are the things inside him: the books he's read, the memories of the people he loves and hopes to see again, the strength and wisdom he's gained from deprivation. He has lost everything, and yet so much remains. ·

Martha Sherrill, a former Washington Post staff writer, is the author of two novels and two works of narrative nonfiction, most recently, "Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain."