The Son-Out of Vietnam: Love, Death and Survival After the Vietnam War

The Vietnam War is now largely forgotten-except by those who lived through it and suffered its consequences, and especially the hundreds of thousands who later fled by boat from communist oppression, the original boat-people.





Paul Quinn, former spy and old Indochina hand, had seen the end of the war and its after-effects. Now retired from the intelligence game, he lives an uneventful life in Sydney. But when the beautiful, vulnerable Hao Tran, a widow with a tragic past, comes seeking his help to rescue her adopted son from a group of die-hard extremists in Sydney's Vietnamese community, he can't refuse. Deeply moved by her story, and falling in love, he quickly plunges into a dangerous web of emigre politics, where old enmities are kept alive by dreams of revenge and violence is not far below the surface. Turning for support to his old employers, he discovers that they too have an agenda of their own...





From the last days of Saigon to its deadly finish in modern-day Sydney, this story of passionate love and political intrigue presents a penetrating insight into the long-term plight of former Vietnamese boat-people, still struggling to come to terms with the past long after they've resettled into more welcoming lands-and the machinations of intelligence agencies playing for high political stakes.

The author worked for many years for the Australian government, in Canberra and abroad. Like the narrator in the novel, he witnessed at first hand the last stages of the Vietnam War and its long-term effects. He is now retired and lives in Melbourne.