The Eaves of Heaven

Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars is a Vietnam War memoir by Andrew X. Pham chronicling his father's experience of three conflicts that changed his life – the French occupation of Indochina, the Japanese invasion of Vietnam during World War II, and the Vietnam War. Pham writes his father's story in three parts, focusing on each conflict moving from the past into the present. Thong Van Pham goes from being a wealthy landowner to a soldier to a refugee, finally ending up as one of many boat people who floated to California in search of a better life.

Pham, who has written a previous memoir detailing his own experience traveling to California from Vietnam in his early years, takes on this chapter in his family history by writing in the voice of his own father. Though risky, Pham uses literary flourish and his father's own narrative account to create a vivid, first-person examination of life in Vietnam, and the events that lead up to Pham's own story.

The book begins with Thong Van Pham's childhood, living in feudal Vietnam as the nephew of a magistrate. Thong was born into a wealthy family of landlords, who lived about forty miles from the city of Hanoi in what was then called the Red River delta. Thong's uncle was a French colonial official, the lord of the enormous family estate, and a local magistrate responsible for the district. Thong's father, the younger brother of the family, spent most of his time in Hanoi, sampling the nightlife and acting as a rich playboy. As a result, Thong was raised among the village boys, staging cricket fights and doing what boys do.



Thong's childhood was ripped out from underneath him, however, when the Japanese seized what was then French Indochina, demanding huge quantities of rice and causing many local people to starve. The Japanese were eventually pushed out of the country in 1945, leading leader Ho Chi Minh to declare the nation independent, but the French wanted back what they felt was rightfully theirs. Soon, the Vietnamese were stuck in a war with French soldiers, and the Communist leaders of Vietnam were assassinating anyone who might be a French sympathizer – including Thong's uncle, the magistrate.

Soon after the death of his uncle, Thong's mother died in childbirth, and Thong and his siblings were left with their father, whose opium habit inspired him to move to Hanoi to start an inn. What was initially a reputable establishment soon degenerated into a whorehouse for the French, and eventually failed. The family fled to Saigon, where Thong's father stared a noodle shop that also failed, likely due in large part to Thong's opium-addled father. Despite the instability and poverty of his family, Thong went to school and graduated with high marks. He started a family, got a job as a teacher, and seemed to be doing well for himself. His family life was interrupted, however, when he was drafted in 1963.

Thong worked in the Rural Development Task Force, working with rural villages to support military defense and boost the economy. Eventually, he fell into a life of relative peace, but everyone knew it was short-lived – American funding disappeared, and the world (and the Communist government) came crashing down around him. This led, of course, to Thong and his family's eventual flight to America in the 1970s as part of the boat people, and a new life in America which came with its own struggles – language barriers, poverty, and the racial and cultural bias that comes with living as a refugee in a foreign nation.



Andrew X Pham is a Vietnamese-American author of two memoirs: Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam and The Eaves of Heaven. For his work, he has received a Whiting Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other honors. At various points in his life, Pham as worked as an engineer, technical writer, farmer, and restaurant critic. He has also served on a number of literary panels and judged book prizes, among his many literary pursuits. He has also translated books from the Vietnamese.