As The Heart Bones Break

A searing story about a Vietnamese man's struggle to balance the many faces of belong and loyalty in a Vietnamese family torn asunder by war and unresolved peace.

In Thong Tran's Vietnam, everyone is at war and no one is who they seem—not his adopted father, a French civil servant, not his Blood Father, the Viet Cong rooster master, not his pro-American journalist tutor. Like them, the boy from the Mekong Delta cannot escape the war.

And like them, he too must create shades of himself to survive.

But even a conflicted heart needs a home. Thong yearns for a true father and a cause to give himself to. He chooses independence, liberty and happiness—his tutor and the Viet Cong.Tragically, there's no independence, liberty or happiness at war's end. Re-invented as an American aerospace engineer, husband and father—the Viet Cong informer must spend another half a lifetime crossing the Pacific as a defense industry dealmaker before he can set down the bones rankling in his heart.