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Back Lost Soldiers Save as PDF
Chapters (48)
  1. COVER PAGE
  2. TITLE PAGE
  3. EPIGRAPH
  4. PRAISE
  5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  6. MAP
  7. PROLOGUE
  8. CHAPTER ONE
  9. CHAPTER TWO
  10. CHAPTER THREE
  11. CHAPTER FOUR
  12. CHAPTER FIVE
  13. CHAPTER SIX
  14. CHAPTER SEVEN
  15. CHAPTER EIGHT
  16. CHAPTER NINE
  17. CHAPTER TEN
  18. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  19. CHAPTER TWELVE
  20. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  21. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  22. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  23. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  24. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  25. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  26. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  34. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  36. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  42. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  43. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  44. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  45. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  46. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  47. COPYRIGHT PAGE
  48. What’s next onyour reading list?

Through the heavy joss smoke he smelled the perfume again. When he turned around, Van and her father were standing behind him. She smiled at him, looking stunning in a pair of blue jeans and a bright red pullover blouse. The old colonel was staring intently at Condley with a totally different look than his jaunty teasing at the golf course. He was fighting back his emotions, as if it were too much to comprehend that Condley’s presence had brought such tranquillity to the face of his own wife.

Finally he stepped forward and stuck out his thick paw of a hand, nodding brusquely. “Chao Ong, Cong Ly.”

“We’ll go to temple with you,” said Van, her eyes thanking him more than he deserved. “If it’s okay?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

They took two motorbikes. Colonel Pham drove his wife. Behind them, Condley rode on the back of Van’s new Honda. She wove expertly through the obstacles in the side streets. He teased her for wearing a pair of elbow-length white gloves and a yellow handkerchief over her face to protect her skin from the bad air and the sun. The insides of his thighs pressed against her hips as he struggled to stay on the motorbike through pothole bumps and weaving turns. When they reached a wider road and picked up speed, her hair whipped and caressed his face. People on the sidewalks and in the traffic stared at him and Van with curiosity and faint disapproval. But she was alive, laughing and turning against him as she maneuvered the motorbike, teasing him for not trusting her driving. And by the time they reached the temple his hands felt like they belonged on her waist.

The temple sat back from the street, behind a yellow plaster wall. Old banyan trees and crumbling sidewalks marked its outer yard. Its gates were closed. Van drove through a narrow break in the wall meant for pedestrians and parked her motorbike in the yard itself. The temple seemed ancient, the curling dragons on its rooftops derivative of Chinese architecture, while the Buddhist symbols and several gargoyles were reminiscent of parts of India. This intermingling of the two grand Asian cultures here at the very seat of their beliefs reminded him again why Viet Nam had once been labeled Indochina.

He and Van walked together toward the temple’s door, where her parents already were waiting. Her nearness, and the long minutes he had spent with his arms around her as they rode along the city streets, made this journey seem somehow symbolic: the temple, high and yellow and ornate; her parents, waiting at its doors; she herself, dressed modern but striding slowly with an eternal grace toward an ancient task.