HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha

Publisher: Gival Press, (October 1, 2023)

Category: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

Tour dates: January 16-Feb 23, 2024

ISBN: 978-1940724454

Available in Print and ebook, 280 pages

Description HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha

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.

Praise HER: The Flame Tree by Khanh Ha

“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

HER: The Flame Tree

Guest review by Laura

“Women stood and cranked pasty rice dough that wormed through a wire mesh, the dangling strands oozing and dropping into the boiling water.

In the center of the shack, three men took
turns pounding rice grains with a long wooden pestle in
a huge, squat rock mortar. White dust hung like smoke
around them.”

I hope it isn't too early to call this my favorite book of the year! 'Her: The Flame Tree,' is simply a work of art. Written by author Khanh Ha, this novel takes place in Vietnam during three different time periods.

In the beginning, an expatriate reporter named Minh travels from America, back to his home country of Vietnam to find a very unique woman named Phuong. Now, although Minh is the first character that is introduced, Phuong's heartbreaking story is really the meat of the novel, and the reason that it is so compelling.

Phuong was orphaned as a baby and adopted by a well-respected man, a eunuch of the Imperial palace. Respected and well taken care of, Phuong lived a fascinating life with many adventures and Minh remembers her tales as she told them to him. On top of this, there is a third thread through the novel, the stories of Phuong's father, Canh and his love for the emperor's concubine. All three stories are woven together in an intricate tapestry that creates a beautiful novel.

I was so touched by this book, I found myself not wanting to put it down even after I was finished reading it! Adding to Khanh Ha's award-winning collection of novels, 'Her: The Flame Tree,' is a must-read for literature lovers everywhere.

I promise that if you read this book, you will walk away feeling inspired, moved and like the world is full of absolutely endless possibilities.

How to Make Your Characters Believable

With literary fiction, you deal with characters more than with plots. You deal with spontaneity and dynamics of characterization which shapes the story line. You don’t shoehorn your characters into a predetermined plot. Depth of characterization is the heart of literary fiction in addition to the mood, the atmosphere, the ambience, the prose.
Unlike an actor who plays just his role, an author plays all his characters’ roles, like a man who plays chess against himself. You can imagine characters. Yet until you write them out, you haven’t known them. Put them in motion. Let them interact with one another. Let them live in some environment. It’s then that you begin to explore your characters’ depths. What’s the hardest part in writing a novel? Characterization. That’s what separates a literary novel from a potboiler. Characters shape a story line, not the other way around. You can’t think up a plot and then shoehorn your characters into it. If you do, you are writing a potboiler. In fact, well-developed characters create a more convincing story line, even shaping it or altering it against your original vision.

Truthfully speaking, I do not know much about my characters until I write the first draft. Yet the writing itself causes a chemical reaction among my characters. By writing I mean the author begins exploring his fictional world inhabited by characters whom he has created in name only, until he interacts with them. He might care for one character more than others. But undeniably to all of them he is omniscient. He exists in all of them. Conversely, they all exist in him.

A writer must stay true to himself in every word he pens. Then his depth of perception in things, in people will allow him to create believable characters. Then his literary gift allows him to breathe life into them, making them interesting. A protagonist doesn’t have to be sympathetic so readers can care deeply for him. He can draw no sympathy but he must be fascinating, and that makes a a story a great story. Case in point: Paris Trout by Pete Dexter (eponymous protagonist), Lester Ballard in Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God.

©Khanh Ha

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.

Website:

http://www.authorkhanhha.com

Blog:

http://authorkhanhha.blogspot.com

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/KhanhHa69784776

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https://www.facebook.com/authorkhanhha

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www.pinterest.com/khanhha

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