Monsoon by Di Morrissey (Macmillan)

Monsoon by Australian author Di Morrissey is the story of two women who grew up together and have ties to Vietnam. Sandy Donaldson has been working with an NGO for the last four years and her contract is about to expire, however, she doesn’t really want to leave the country she has come to love. She persuades her friend Anna, whose mother was a Vietnamese boat person, to come and explore her mother’s heritage. Anna is reluctant to leave Australia and feels she has no ties with the country as her mother died when she was a very young girl. 

Sandy has one other connection to Vietnam. Her father, Phil Donaldson is a veteran who served in the war and was at the Battle of Long Tan, a battle that took place at a rubber plantation in Phuoc Tuy province. The clash involved Australia’s D Company, 6th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment (6 RAR) seeing action against the Viet Cong and People’s Army of Vietnam. Phil Donaldson was a member of the 6th Battalion. He comes home a bitter man and resents the fact that his daughter is helping what he still considers “the enemy”. 

I wasn’t familiar with Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, so the Battle of Long Tan was a bit of a history lesson for me. I know I may get some flack for this as it’s sexist but I would classify this story as chick-lit. It is without a doubt aimed more towards women and the romance they may find in a foreign country. However, It is also a story about coming to terms with one’s identity. 

Sandy and Anna meet Tom Ahearn, a former war correspondent for an Australian newspaper. He was in Vietnam around the same time as Sandy’s father and may have interviewed him at a hospital that housed wounded soldiers who saw action at Long Tan. 

It has been forty years since the siege at Long Tan and the government of Australia is finally giving it the recognition the soldiers thought it deserved. A ceremony is to be held and many of the surviving veterans are planning to attend. Only one person is adamant about not attending - Phil Donaldson

Monsoon is a very moving story of people facing the ghosts of their past. Phil with the demons that haunt him. Anna, coming to terms with what it means to be Viet Kieu, a foreign-born Vietnamese, and finally there is Sandy’s relationship with her father who never speaks about the war, what he saw, or what happened to him. Most of the characters are people you can care about except for Anna’s boyfriend Carlo, who seems to be a two-dimensional model of an egotistical, narcissistic specimen of machismo that’s just a bit over the top. 

Monsoon blends present day Vietnam with the memories of war and the damage it has done to both people and country. The streets of Ho Chi Minh City and Saigon and other locales come to life with Morrissey’s vivid descriptions, as does the food and the atmosphere of each city, from the World Heritage designated Halong Bay in the north to the island of Phu Quoc in the south. It’s enough to make you want to visit the country yourself.~Ernie Hoyt