About this item
In 1986, the teenage daughter of a wealthy family gets lost in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father and is changed forever. In 2009, a woman captures a rare two-headed cobra as part of a dangerous money-making scheme with a former lover. And in 2011, a young, unhappy American living in Saigon with her sort-of boyfriend disappears without a trace.
Over the course of the novel, the fates of these three women will lock together in an exhilarating series of nested narratives. Along the way, we meet a young boy who is sent to a boarding school in the mountains for the mtis children of French expatriates, just before Vietnam declares its independence from colonial rule in 1945; two Frenchmen who are trying to start a business with the Vietnam War on the horizon; and the employees of the Saigon Spirit Eradication Co.
About the Author
Violet Kupersmith is the author of the novel BUILD YOUR HOUSE AROUND MY BODY and the short story collection THE FRANGIPANI HOTEL. She previously taught English with the Fulbright Program in the Mekong Delta and has lived in Da Lat and Saigon, Vietnam. She was the 2015-2016 David T.K. Wong fellow at the University of East Anglia, and she is the recipient of a 2022 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
