Synopsis

If the fate of unrequited love survives fifty-one years, nine months, and four days in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, it leads the way for HER: The Flame Tree, a spare, remorseless love triptych that sweeps through the rich panorama of two generations of colonial and post-colonial Vietnam. The hopeless love of a young eunuch for a high-ranking concubine is one of this novel’s three stories that illuminate the oriental mystery of Vietnam, as epic as it is persevering,

Despite a rich trove of documentary films, Western readers know little of the spiritual face of Vietnam. Framed between 1915 and 1993, HER: The Flame Tree begins in Huế, the former imperial capital Vietnam. It is in the Purple Forbidden City, that Canh, the young eunuch, fulfills his vow to be near the girl of his dreams, a villager-turned imperial concubine.

The novel begins with an expatriate Vietnamese man living in the United States who journeys back to Vietnam to search for the adopted daughter of a centenarian eunuch of the Imperial Court of Huế to find out who she really is. His world takes on a new meaning after he becames a part of her life.

Phượng. Her name is the magnificent flame tree’s flowers that grace the ancient capital of Huế. Her father, mentor of Canh the young eunuch, was a hundred-year-old grand eunuch of the Imperial Court, who had adopted and raised her since she was a baby. Their peaceful world suddenly changed when one day, sometime in the early years of the Vietnam war, Jonathan Edward came into their lives. On his quest to search for his just deceased lover’s mysterious birth, there he met Phượng, an exquisite beauty.

Through the eye of her father, history is retold. Just before the fall of the French Indochina during the last dynasty of Vietnam, a young eunuch hopelessly fell in love with a high-ranking concubine. Once the eunuch had secured the concubine’s trust, it became a fatal attraction. The eunuch died. The concubine, still a virgin, lost her mind. Her father said she was possessed by the young eunuch’s spirit who had been madly in love with her.

HER: The Flame Tree does not have the flavor of historical fiction, plot-heavy and sexually graphic. Rather, it is atmospheric and impressionistic, in the style of Snow Falling on Cedars. The magnificent poinciana flowers, which grace the ancient capital of Huế, symbolize farewell in Vietnamese adolescent romance. Its symbolic image befits Phượng for her magnanimous nature and grace, and the scarlet blossoming flowers when Jonathan Edward bids Phượng farewell is beauty without sadness—Wait and Hope.

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Praise

“In this almost folkloric saga of a royal eunuch, his adopted daughter and the tragedies and triumphs of love in their lives from the days of the emperor’s court to the war with America, Khanh Ha takes us deeply into the heart of traditional Vietnam in a tale told in such lushly poetic, descriptive language that it immerses the reader deeply and sensually into the gorgeousness of the land, the texture and taste of food, and the complex humanity of the characters. Her: The Flame Tree is an intricately woven, seductively fascinating story of family, sacrifice, loyalty and redeeming love in the face of heart-breaking loss that breathtakingly weaves the lives of individuals we come to know and care about into the saga of Vietnamese—and American—history.” —Wayne Karlin, author of Memorial Days

“Ha evokes a visceral image of Vietnam . . .  A vivid study of a country’s fraught history and how its people struggled to make sense of it.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Her: The Flame Tree is a beautiful novel, rich with evocations of natural setting in coastal Vietnam; remembered action going back more than a hundred years; and characters both extraordinary and poignantly ordinary, developed by layer upon layer of stories.”—Elizabeth Harris, judge and author of Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman

“Early in Khanh Ha’s latest novel Her: The Flame Tree, the author describes a book made of delicate leaves of gold. Such a volume would be ideal to record this shimmering and often tender tale of love, loss, and memory.” —Steve Evans, author of The Marriage of True Minds

Excerpt

Miss Phượng met the last concubine of Emperor Tự-Ðức when the woman was very old, in the final year of her long life. When the emperor died in 1883, she was only fifteen. She told Miss Phượng she was one hundred and twenty-three now. Small, birdlike, white hair parted in the middle, braided in two small plaits on the sides of her head.

She took Miss Phượng by the hand and led her into the cottage, which sat behind a bamboo hedge in the back of the mausoleum. She served tea from a tiny blue-flowered pot the size of her hand. The nougats she offered were made of egg whites and brown sugar and chopped nuts. Brittle, they melted quickly in the mouth.

“I used to make them for the emperor,” she told Miss Phượng. “A long time ago.” Then regarding Miss Phượng, she nodded, “See the banyan out there?”

It dwarfed the cottage with its shade, like an immense pavilion. Miss Phượng traced its tortuous roots to the steps of the concubine’s home.

“It was a little tree when I came,” the old woman muttered.

“Yes,” Miss Phượng said, “trees outlive us. My father had a magnolia planted outside the Trinh Minh Palace during his service as the grand eunuch for the imperial family. He would be three years older than you, Madam, if he still lived.”

In the deceased emperor’s personal room the old concubine sat down on the carved rosewood bed. Hunched between the parted panels of the yellow mosquito net, she sat amidst her husband’s belongings—the bed, its embroidered mat, the porcelain pillow, the tea, the rice liquor, the areca-nuts and betel leaves and a tiny pot of lime. They were here for him when he returned in spirit.

For one hundred and eight years she replenished them every morning so that when he arrived nothing was missing, nothing was stale. He could read his favorite books. He could write, as was his passion, in his annals, each page of which was a thin leaf of gold. He would find again his gold swords, jade shrubs, his chess men in green and white jade, chopsticks made of kim-giao white wood that turned black against any sort of poison. They were arranged there under glass.

Miss Phượng took the old woman’s hand and led her out of her haunt, passing candle-lit nooks and corners and the eternally mildewed air of the sunless chambers.

©Khanh Ha

Guest Review by Nora

A spellbinding novel from one of the greatest authors of our time– ‘Her: The Flame Tree,’ by Khanh Ha, is a one-of-a-kind story that allows the reader to travel deep into the heart of Vietnamese history.

Minh is a Vietnamese man now living in America who returns to his home country to seek out one very special woman and learn her story. Phuong is the adopted daughter of a former court eunuch who spent much of her life caring for her elderly father. Of both Vietnamese and French descent, Phuong knows nothing of her birth parents and has only ever known the love of her adopted father, Canh. But Canh has a storied history as well, and the novel unveils these three different timelines as it goes along.

From the halls of the palace of the Imperial Emperor to the packed streets of the marketplace, ‘Her: he Flame Tree’ takes you on a journey that you won’t soon forget.

I’m a huge fan of Khanh Ha’s writing and have enjoyed several of his books in the past, which is why I had a feeling I would enjoy this one. As an author, he has an undeniable way of crafting an atmosphere that makes the reader feel immersed in the story.

Between that creative blend of Vietnamese and American culture that Ha is so great at illustrating, and the strength and power of the characters, this book was a strong five star read for me!

I can’t imagine a better way to spend a winter evening than enjoying a book by this stellar author. This, being one of my first books of the year, was such a treat for both the heart and mind. I simply cannot wait to read whatever Ha comes out with next! I’m sure it will be extraordinary!

About the Author

Award winning author Khanh Ha is a nine-time Pushcart nominee, finalist for The Ohio State University Fiction Collection Prize, Mary McCarthy Prize, Many Voices Project, Prairie Schooner Book Prize, The University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize, Prize Americana, and The Santa Fe Writers Project. He is the recipient of the Sand Hills Prize for Best Fiction, The Robert Watson Literary Prize in Fiction, The Orison Anthology Award for Fiction, The James Knudsen Prize for Fiction, The C&R Press Fiction Prize, The EastOver Fiction Prize, The Blackwater Press Fiction Prize, The Gival Press Novel Award, and The Red Hen Press Fiction Award.

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Giveaway

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