This is a book review with a difference; I will make you aware of my partiality before I continue.
The author of The Dark Journey, Truong Minh Hoa, has been a family friend since I was 7 years old. As a Vietnam war veteran and then a WA Police Officer in country service, my father was enlisted by the sergeant-in-charge at Katanning to give driving lessons to a Vietnamese immigrant who spoke almost no English, primarily because, as the sergeant explained, "You went to Vietnam, right Murph?".
Hoa, and the young Vietnamese woman he was living with, Nguyen Thi Thu Thanh, both passed their driving test and were extremely grateful for the guidance they had received; driving a motor car was very tangible evidence of their freedom and the opportunity afforded them in their new lives. Their offering to pay for the driving lessons was flatly refused by my father, an honourable gesture that firmed Hoa's respect for our family. Hoa and Thanh were both hard-working, generous and gracious people and were later married with my parents in attendance.
As we grew to know Hoa and he and my father shared their personal experiences of the Vietnam war, it became apparent that Hoa had been deeply troubled by the events subsequent to the fall of Saigon to the Communist North after the Australian and US troop withdrawals in the early 1970's. I was aware that Hoa had escaped from his homeland to come to Australia as a refugee and would be immediately arrested if he ever tried to return to the country of his birth. As a boy, this information was easy to understand but more difficult to comprehend; Hoa's experiences in the "re-education camps" of the Viet Cong had come to shape his world view, but also provided a solid frame to his emotional demons that caused him to be oftentimes distant and detached. Having grown up with a father who himself was dealing with the trauma of his own involvement in the war, watching these men share their experiences provided another aspect to my own understanding of the war.
Hoa was rightly proud of his service as an officer in the South Vietnamese Army, and their surrender to the Communist North quickly turned into a test of his resolve and spirit, not to mention his physical ability to withstand deprivation and torture. Hoa catalouges these harrowing experiences in The Dark Journey with the clarity and detail of a man who relives those awful experiences every day of his life. Written over a 20 year period, Hoa's account is written in the same slightly halted English that he speaks, but that provides a strong central character for the events he catalogues. If the story had been ghostwritten or heavily edited, it would seem less genuine. That is not to say that it is difficult to read; far from it. The book is in fact almost as quickly paced as an airport potboiler, the only difference being that the events being described are not embellished in any way. Hoa had pieces of rice paper with his notes smuggled from the camps by his family, an act which would surely have been met with the harshest penalties had it been discovered.
Hoa's tale is written from the first-person, and as such the story is imbued with his his own political views. Hoa's depiction of the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh as a monster comparable with Osama Bin Laden or Adolf Hitler provides the reader with a very emotional connection with the protagonist; Hoa sees himself as a victim of the expansionist oligarchy of the North and the unbridled hatred with which he views their leader practically drips from the pages. Once again, Hoa is not setting out to provide a detached historical overview, but in a very real and troubling way, The Dark Journey is a visceral retelling of what happens when we are caught up in circumstances beyond our control and how ultimately, from the most desperate of circumstances, a new and fulfilling life can be found.
The Dark Journey is published by Strategic Publishing Group. ISBN: 978-1-60911-161-8
