Nancy tells Linny that the previous episode with Dr. Bryan Denny was not as good quality as we usually like to present. Linny agrees that his interview was too good not to post and hopes that our listeners will enjoy it, despite the sound quality. Linny reports that she has snagged her first speaking role in a movie. Nancy talks about having met the author of our book this month, Nguyen Phan Que Mai. Que Mai was in Lincoln because our book, DUST CHILD, was chosen as the One Book, One Lincoln book for 2026. Nancy was invited to a reception for Que Mai at Lincoln’s Asian Cultural and Community Center. DUST CHILD is about two Vietnamese sisters during the Vietnam War, an American veteran returning to Vietnam 50 years after the war, and an Amerasian man born from a Vietnamese woman and a Black GI and the challenges he faces as an abandoned baby. Linny recalls remembering the Vietnam War as a little girl. Still, she felt she learned a lot about the war through this book, especially what happens after America pulls out from Vietnam. We are introduced to two teen sisters who are working on their parent’s small rice farm. Under false pretenses, they decide to travel to Saigon, believing they only need to serve tea to American soldiers. This will enable them to earn money to pay off their parents’ terrible debt. Of course, the girls are expected to do more than serve tea. Linny and Nancy agree that Nancy is more like the younger sister in the book. Linny thinks so because the younger sister is a flirt. Nancy thinks so because the younger sister is excited to go to the city and leave their boring life in the country. Linny notes that DUST CHILD is a little like the MISS SAIGON story. Nancy agrees. The book also introduces us to the life of Phong, an Amerasian man who has been abandoned by his Vietnamese mother. In Vietnam, the products of Asian women and soldiers look different from the general population. They are discriminated against. It’s hard for them to find jobs. They are often orphaned. Phong has Black features and is in his 40s, so it’s close to the present day, and he is still barely getting by economically or even really emotionally. The one bright spot is his lovely family - wife and two children. But his in-laws disowned his wife when she married him and his kids don’t have much hope for a successful life. Since he was little, he’s been wanting to go to America and find his father. So, Phong’s story is pretty bleak, too. Linny learned a lot from Phong’s story. So, when, into the tea room walks a US GI, Dan, who seems really different from the other men. Linny said that when he appears, she held him at a distance because she knows the impact of war and that the soldiers were so, so young. Nancy was also sure that the love story between Dan and Trang was not going to end well. The story was totally set up to end in tragedy. Which it does. Dan ends up setting Trang up in an apartment so she is always available to him. Trang really feels like they are in love. But Dan has a fiancé at home that he never mentions to Trang. When Trang becomes pregnant, she hopes Dan will see this as fantastic news. Instead, he immediately abandons her. That, for Nancy, was the most heart-breaking point of the story. For Linny, there were two heart-breaking parts of the story. The first was Phong’s life as a child and young man when he is living on his own and facing crushing racism. The second was when Trang dies on the back of her sister’s bike. Dan is an interesting character because we see him as a young soldier and how he changes from being somewhat naive to probably having PTSD from his experiences as a helicopter pilot. Then, we meet him 50 years later and learn a little about how he has struggled with PTSD, but also that he’s married his fiancé and had a pretty good life. He returns to Vietnam, at his wife’s behest. She has planned all sort of fun activities for them. Within hours, he decides he wants to find Trang, who he only knows as Kim, her tearoom name. Before the end of their first day, Dan’s wife finds out about Trang and Dan, which pitches their marriage in crisis. Nancy likes how the author doesn’t let Dan off the hook. Dan has to struggle with WHY he wants to find Trang and what he intends to do if he finds her. He never really settles on a very good answer to this question. Linny thinks it’s interesting that, in Dan’s mind, his child is still a child. He doesn’t realize that baby is now 50 years old, who may want nothing to do with you because he left her. Nancy tells Linny there is one passage in the book that I feel sums up the entire book. Nancy read this exchange between Trang and Quýnh: “Those soldiers… The newly arrived ones are civilized. But when they go to the battlefield, it changes them. Trang nodded. She’d seen it happening with Dan. “I’ve been thinking…violence is a poison. When you commit violence or witness it, it rots you.” “Yes… That’s why I fear those men, but I also feel sorry for them… I mean, they think they come here to help us, but they’re making things worse. The bombings, the killings… all of that horror is being returned to them.” Linny remembers that passage, too. She says not only does it impact that generation, but future generations. Kids are still stepping on undetonated bombs and there are still children born with defects from Agent Orange, aside from all the other trauma and racism. Nancy mentions she recently read an interesting story about a psychologist whose mom survived the Holocaust. The psychologist recognized intergenerational trauma, but also focused on how there is also intergenerational resilience. We see a little of that when we meet Quýnh as an older woman, in her 60s. But she still never tells her family the entire story of her life. Linny says she completely understands Quýnh’s keeping that part of her life a secret. She likes the idea of recognizing the resilience of people who came through the war. Linny thinks the life she makes for herself after the war is amazing. Nancy likes the redemption she experiences at the end of the book. Nancy says that, in the end, there are a lot of really interesting characters. Each dealing with the war and its aftermath in different ways. But they are all HARMED by it. Nancy was not surprised to discover the author is involved in a number of peace movements.