The Mango Rain

About the Book

The Mango Rain is an epic narrative about a small group of Americans and Vietnamese caught up in the dramatic events that swept Indochina during the 1956—1975 period. For them this period brought an odyssey, a journey full of adventures, changing fortunes, and quests in their own hearts. The peaceful late l950s is a golden afternoon, a time of love and youthful vision as exquisite as the mango rain which comes in the hot dry season to bring a cool respite that is, alas, all too fleeting. Sadly, with the Communist insurgency in the early 1960s, the golden afternoon is darkened and then obliterated by the Vietnam War. In the face of ever—growing violence and destruction, life takes on more sharply drawn lines. The Mango Rain also tells in the stories of insurgents, Khanh, Cay, and Tai how during the l9SOs and early l960s, the Viet Cong successfully blends into the South Vietnamese society to bomb the American embassy, and confront the South Vietnamese Army. As the Vietnam War draws to a close in April 1975 there is little left of the 1950s Vietnam. Still, on the day the Communist troops enter Saigon, Tho Van, who refuses to leave with Peggy and Stan, moves through her garden and looks up as the soft, fragrant mango rain falls. In Thu Van’s shattered world, the mango rain is a reminder of the vanished past, but it also is a sign of hope.

About the Author

Gerald Cannon Hickey is an anthropologist who did extensive field research in Vietnam and Laos between 1956 and 1973. He is author of Village in Vietnam, the study of a Vietnamese farm community. Sons of the Mountains and Free in the Forest are ethnohistories of the Vietnamese central highlands, and Shattered World traces the effects of the Vietnam War on the highland people. Another work, Kingdom in the morning Mist is a non-fiction story of a French adventurer who in 1888 established a kingdom in the mountain country. Window on a War is an account of Gerald Cannon Hickey’s role as an anthropologist in the Vietnam War.