I’ve been living with the thing for almost two years - there were times when it came close to overwhelming my life.
Well - that may be a little too much hype, but still, it was a lot of work.
I am speaking of my first (and last) book - “Same River, Different Water: A Veteran’s Journey from Vietnam to Việt Nam”. It is finally at the publishers. I am waiting for the copy editor’s feedback - I suspect there will be a lot of rewriting to do - and that will take time - but at least I can see the end of this thing.
Thanksgiving saw three Vietnamese in our home - and it has become the norm to have Vietnamese share and learn about this wonderful American traditional celebration of excess in food and football. But this year, we had a couple join us whom we had never met. Being our age, the husband was a Vietnam vet. He enjoyed being around the Vietnamese, but he could not imagine himself going back to the place where he had created so many bad memories.
I’ve had that reaction from veterans so many times since we returned in 2006 that I expect it - and whats more, I understand it. Knowing why they are mistrustful of a place that had such a negative impact on their lives is the prime reason why I deal with the topic early in the book - in the first few paragraphs of Chapter One.
Trying to decide what stories to tell and what not to tell has been one of the more difficult decisions while writing the book. I wanted to concentrate on describing today’s Việt Nam, but as my editor kept reminding me, the only association Americans have with the country is the war - there would be no connection otherwise. But I also did not want to write another “My Year in The Nam” book either - there are a lot of those out there, and most of them written better than anything I could write. I had to figure out how to combine my two views - my time in the country when there was a war going on compared to the very different country it is today.
And that took time - a lot more time than I had anticipated it would take when I first started writing the thing two years ago.
Here’s one of the 123 photos in the book - part of the skyline of today’s Saigon.