David Lucas’ New Novel Uprooted

David Lucas’ newest novel, Uprooted – A Vietnamese Family’s Journey, 1935-1975, is an uplifting family saga based on a true story that spans three generations of a Vietnamese family. Uprooted is a tale of survival through perseverance, ingenuity and improbable luck.

 

Uprooted tells the story of Lucas’ grandfather-in-law who grew up farming rice paddies in Tonkin. He lived in Hanoi during the Japanese occupation, survived the famine of 1945, joined the Viet Minh in 1946, escaped Communist persecution with his family in 1954, worked for the USIS from 1955 and later the U.S. Army as a radio technician until 1973, before fleeing on a boat from Vung Tau in 1975.

Uprooted is written as a novel but is based on over eighty interviews and a research trip to Vietnam. Uprooted Cover

ABOUT THE BOOK

The ancient Vietnamese life in which Tung was raised is being torn apart. It is not enough
to work hard and grow rice any more. Now every farmer in Mai Dong has to pick a side. The French or the Communists.

“They are going to murder your father.”

Intelligence, humility and graft made Que an honorable figure in Mai Dong. His values ensured the family’s survival through famine and flood. They will not protect him against the Communists, who need class-enemy victims for their land reform campaign.

Tung becomes protector and provider for the family, who struggle to stay together as World War Two, the French Indochinese War and the American War tear his country apart over forty years.

Vietnam becomes the battleground for the cold war. Decisions made in Paris, Washington, Moscow and Peking force three generations of Tung’s family to risk their lives just to survive in the changing landscape.

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LINKS

Buy your own copy on Amazon.

For more details and a chapter preview, visit the Uprooted website.

To view David Lucas’ blog posts, visit the Uprooted blog.

 

Before he published Uprooted, David Lucas was an award-winning writer and producer of radio advertisements in the UK. His work appeared on every major commercial UK network and the BBC. He was also one of the creators of the Traces of Nuts comedy podcast, that garnered over 250,000 downloads in its three year run. He moved to America in 2008 to marry a girl from Florida. It was after meeting her grandfather Tung, that Uprooted began to take shape. Since it’s release, Uprooted has become requested material by Vietnamese professors from, amongst other institutions, Harvard, Cornell and NYU.


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