Message from Nam
Paxton Andrews is a sheltered southern girl whose eyes open to the world when she goes to Berkeley and decides to become a journalist. She then goes to Vietnam to report on the war, writing a newspaper column about what it’s really like for the soldiers and the Vietnamese. Through her travels and reporting, she meets men who are on the front lines, and her relationships with them shape her life–while the war has its own impact on her and those relationships.
This is the only Danielle Steel novel I’ve ever read, but I loved it. I read this several times in high school and while there is plenty of romance (it is a Steel novel, after all), it also brought places like Saigon, Da Nang, and Cu Chi to life. I learned about the “tunnel rats” who bravely burrowed into the Viet Cong’s secret tunnels and the way veterans were broken after fighting this losing war. It’s been ages since I read it and I’m not sure how it holds up, but it looms large in my memory, and I think that alone is a strong endorsement.
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Publisher’s Description
As a journalist, Paxton Andrews would experience Vietnam firsthand. We follow her from high school in Savannah to college in Berkeley and then to work in Saigon.
For the soldiers she knew and met there, Viet Nam would change their lives in ways they could never have imagined. For the men in her life, Viet Nam would change their lives in ways hey could not escape or deny. Peter Wilson, fresh from law school, was a new recruit who would confont his fate in Da Nang. Ralph Johnson, a seasoned AP correspondent, had been in Saigon since the beginning. He knew Vietnam and the war inside out. Bill Quinn, captain of the Cu Chi tunnel rats, was on his fourth tour of duty and it seemed nothing could touch him. Sergeant Tony Campobello had come to Vietnam from the streets of New York to vent a rage that had followed him all the way to Saigon.
For seven years Paxton Andrews would write an acclaimed newspaper column from the front before finally returning to the States and then attending the Paris peace talks. But for her and the men who fought in Viet Nam, life would never be the same again.