Beauty Beneath the Banyan

Three women, three countries, three stories—the destinies of a Thai in prison for murdering her husband, a Cambodian longing for a child, and a Laotian Hmong refugee are threaded together by the tears leftover from the Vietnam War. Each of the women have been marked in some way by the atrocities of Pol Pot’s Cambodia, the Secret War in Laos, and the effects of these wars, as well as the Vietnam War on Thailand, where many displaced people from Laos and Cambodia found refuge, and where American soldiers sought refuge of another kind, ultimately leading to the development of Thailand’s sex tourism industry. The Buddhist concept of reincarnation is used to unite six main characters, three of whom are dead. The dead consist of a Cambodian monk, an American soldier who fought in Vietnam and died in Thailand and an American pilot who flew bombing missions in Laos and died there. These three become dead companions who are watching over three women who are still living with repercussions of war and the lasting imprint this devastation leaves generations later.