Eeyores Butterfly
<img src=http://photopost.wdwinfo.com/data/500/509
- Joined
- May 23, 2008
- Messages
- 5,488
I've been wanting to write a book for a long time, and recently I have been kicking around the idea of writing a fictionalized account of my father's high school years in Vietnam.
Background: My father and two brothers attended high school on an American base in Saigon during the Vietnam war. Their father died when my father was 3, and their mother raised them by herself. She was a photo analyst for the CIA and was stationed in Saigon during the war. She chose to take her three teenaged sons with her to Saigon to live on the base.
The main plot of the book would focus around the time of the evacuation of Saigon. My father was a junior or senior in high school when it was declared unsafe for dependents. They were given less than a week's notice that they were leaving. They had to change schools toward the end of the school year. Dad was forced to go live with an aunt while his mother stayed behind in Vietnam.
There would be lots of humor- typical teenaged high jinks set in an exotic and war torn place. Innocent actions that in the States would have simply gotten them in trouble with grandma could be downright dangerous Vietnam. (Like the time they took my uncle's motorcycle along a jungle road that had been forbidden to them only to see a group of South Vietnamese soldiers enter the jungle ahead of them with guns drawn. About a month later a friend's father was capture along that same road and never heard from again.)
I always loved listening to dad's stories growing up. You hear so little about the civilians who lived and worked in Vietnam during the war, and the children who grew up on the army base in Saigon. It would be from the first person perspective of a teenaged boy living with his two brothers and mother on the American base in Saigon. It would mostly be aimed at a teenaged/young adult population.
What do you think? Would this kind of story interest you?
Background: My father and two brothers attended high school on an American base in Saigon during the Vietnam war. Their father died when my father was 3, and their mother raised them by herself. She was a photo analyst for the CIA and was stationed in Saigon during the war. She chose to take her three teenaged sons with her to Saigon to live on the base.
The main plot of the book would focus around the time of the evacuation of Saigon. My father was a junior or senior in high school when it was declared unsafe for dependents. They were given less than a week's notice that they were leaving. They had to change schools toward the end of the school year. Dad was forced to go live with an aunt while his mother stayed behind in Vietnam.
There would be lots of humor- typical teenaged high jinks set in an exotic and war torn place. Innocent actions that in the States would have simply gotten them in trouble with grandma could be downright dangerous Vietnam. (Like the time they took my uncle's motorcycle along a jungle road that had been forbidden to them only to see a group of South Vietnamese soldiers enter the jungle ahead of them with guns drawn. About a month later a friend's father was capture along that same road and never heard from again.)
I always loved listening to dad's stories growing up. You hear so little about the civilians who lived and worked in Vietnam during the war, and the children who grew up on the army base in Saigon. It would be from the first person perspective of a teenaged boy living with his two brothers and mother on the American base in Saigon. It would mostly be aimed at a teenaged/young adult population.
What do you think? Would this kind of story interest you?
I say go for it!!! I would love to read it!!!!
