Thanh Ho Delivers: A Novel

As a group, Vietnamese refugees overcame extraordinary odds in the 1970's in escaping from their homeland and establishing themselves in America. Many achieved considerable success in a relatively short time. Thanh Ho exemplifies that triumph in a broad sense. She must, in the course of her odyssey, face the dangers of the sea, the atrocities of modern-day pirates, a squalid refugee camp, and finally the bureaucratic aggravations of settling in a new home in Birmingham, a troubled city that is undergoing its own traumatic social and economic changes.Thanh Ho is, at once, a wandering waif and a highly resourceful entrepreneur who quickly takes charge of the practical side of her life, even as she finds her own actions and motives ever more contradictory and baffling. Her remarkable financial success notwithstanding, Thanhy encounters her greatest challenges in trying to find love and contentment in the complex landscape of her troubled mind and heart, where she is torn between her persistent innocence and her instinct to combat a growing list of enemies, not the least of whom is Thanh herself. She discovers in herself an appetite for battle--and a thirst for vengeance.