Vietnam tale ‘ties the loose ends’
Levin-based author Carole Brungar is returning to Vietnam for the fifth time with the release of her new book, The Return.
Brungar, who works as a school librarian at Horowhenua College, said her new book tied up all the loose ends and gave a feelgood closure to the series.
It was a love story that featured an orphan from the first book who was now 40 years old and was returning to Vietnam to find her family.
Despite featuring characters from previous stories, it could be read as a complete stand-alone book.
Brungar said she had always been interested in the Vietnam War, watching documentaries and reading widely on the subject.
During her research for the first story it became apparent she was going to have enough material for a number of books.
‘‘Themore research I did, the more I realised I couldn’t cover it in one book, and so I decided then to split the stories up.’’
Brungar said the books had war scenes, but they all had underlying love stories aswell.
Some featured topics such as post-traumatic stress disorder and Agent Orange, and some were set in Foxton Beach, where she was born.
Brungar had received a good response from people who were involved in, or had family involved in, the war.
Veterans called her in tears saying they had read the book and were transported back to that time.
Veterans’ families had also contacted her to tell her how the books helped them open up and talk about the war.
A New Zealand nurse, who was in Vietnam at the same time as her book Going Home was set, remarked how accurate the depiction was.
She had been over to Vietnam while writing the first draft of the first book to soak up and experience the senses.
‘‘With all the research you do you can’t actually experience that, you can’t experience what it smells like, or what it feels like to get caught in amonsoon.’’
She was humbled by the amount of poverty in Vietnam, and through her books she had been raising money that went towards bikes for underprivileged children there.
Brungar’s novels had won a number of awards and her first book in the series, The Nam Legacy, was in the New Zealand Booksellers top 10 for NZ fiction for seven consecutiveweeks in 2017.
The Returnwill be released on June 1 and can be purchased at bookstores as well as online at . carolebrungar.com.