Chieu Hoi Saloon
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
It’s 1992 and three people’s lives are about to collide against the flaming backdrop of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. Vietnam vet Harry Hudson is a journalist fleeing his past: the war, a failed marriage, and a fear-ridden childhood. Rootless, he stutters, wrestles with depression, and is aware he’s passed the point at which victim becomes victimizer. He explores the city’s lowest dives, the only places where he feels at home. He meets Mama Thuy, a Vietnamese woman struggling to run a Navy bar in a tough Long Beach neighborhood, and Kelly Crenshaw, an African-American prostitute whose husband is in prison. They give Harry insight that maybe he can do something to change his fate in a gripping story that is both a character study and thriller.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Vietnam vet, journalist, and lifelong stutterer Harry Hudson, the protagonist of Harris's poignant debut, dreams of a Sydney Carton moment that might redeem him. Two tragedies haunt Harry the inexplicable killing of an old man in Vietnam and the drowning death of his two-year-old daughter due to his drunken inattention. In 1990, Harry relocates from Oregon to Long Beach, Calif., where he works on the copy desk of the local newspaper and explores the seedier side of life where he feels most at home. The women he connects with, principally Mama Thuy, owner of the Chieu Hoi Saloon, and black prostitute Kelly Crenshaw, find Harry a good friend as well as a willing dupe. Against a backdrop of increasing racial tension generated by the Rodney King trial, Harris unsparingly depicts hard, sometimes sordid lives and the peculiar symbiosis that helps such disparate characters survive. This impressive novel reaches deep into the souls of its characters.
