Dust Child

A powerful, captivating tale of family secrets and hidden heartache from an internationally acclaimed author.

'Dazzling. Sharply drawn and hauntingly beautiful.' Elif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees 

Four lives, entwined forever by decisions made in a time of conflict. But what happens decades later when they unexpectedly converge once more?  

'Dust Child is satisfying, lyrical, and deeply empathetic. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is a born storyteller.' Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow 

Trang and Quynh: sisters who leave their rural village for the bustling city of Saigon, desperate to find work to help their impoverished parents. When they take jobs as ‘ bar girls’, paid to flirt with American GIs, they must decide whether they are willing to turn their backs on the people they used to be.   

Phong: one of the thousands of mixed-race children abandoned by their American fathers and Vietnamese mothers. Phong grows up surrounded by rejection, insulted as a ‘Black American imperialist’, and a ‘child of the enemy’. But he never gives up hope of finding his parents and proving he is more than a ‘bui doi’: more than the ‘dust of life’.  

Dan: A former American helicopter pilot still plagued by regrets about his actions during the Việt Nam war. Now he has returned in the hope of confronting the demons that refuse to fall silent.  

Set between the Việt Nam war and the present day, Dust Child is a sweeping epic of family secrets and hidden heartache, from an internationally celebrated author.