Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
heretofore mostly buried one, of the Montagnard people (or Dega, as they call themselves). In doing so, she reveals that randomness can also result in compassion. Motivated by her desire to know about Y Bhan Buon To, Eva becomes increasingly fascinated by these displaced Vietnamese tribes, and as her investigations lead her further and further from her comfort zone, she finds a new, and as it turns out badly needed, source of passion. While Eva’s position as protagonist locates her at the center of the narrative, Zacharias takes this plot thread as a chance to reveal the history of the Montagnards, native Vietnamese refugees who came to the US in the 1980s to escape the abuse of the Vietcong. Through this part of the narrative, she reminds us that such people live on the edge of middle-class American consciousness and draws us, as Eva is drawn, into a fascination with this particular group, who fought fiercely to protect American soldiers in Vietnam from the Vietcong and then were abandoned by the American government as soon as US soldiers were out and safe. When the
Montagnards were punished by the Vietcong for their aid to the American military, many fathers like Bhan’s escaped to the US, hopeful that their American “friends” would help them get their families to safety, as well. Yet, living in Random, NC, Bhan’s family and many other Dega are still marginalized, supported only by religious and social aid organizations, and even then only minimally. Eva’s fascination with this community is based partly on her new cosmological link to them through the death of Bhan, but is strengthened by the incredible stoicism and loyalty she witnesses, traits fostered not by the comforts of a middle-class life, but by terrible hardships such as hunger, enemy threats, and even domestic abuse. Through her experience with H’nghai and other Dega, Eva comes to appreciate the opportunities that occur only outside one’s comfort zone. By finally acknowledging the impossibility of protecting even her own son from the risks of being alive, she opens herself to the chances for human connection that may result from the random happenings of an uncontrollable universe.
Right Margaret Maron at the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association’s awards dinner, Raleigh, 22 Nov. 2013
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If there is a weakness in the novel, it is Zacharias’s lapse, now and then, into exposition to provide backstory about the Montagnards. The limited information Eva finds about them in articles and books makes its way as almost straight exposition onto pages of the novel. Similarly, when Eva visits the Christian Relocation Services office, the director, Carole Eisen, serves as a vehicle for a short lecture on Montagnard history. The narrative momentum is somewhat slowed and compromised by these passages. However, one cannot help but be fascinated by the story of these people, a story that ultimately becomes integrated into Zacharias’s overarching theme, after all. At Random succeeds as an exploration of human vulnerability and, more generally, as a novel, engaging the reader through well-drawn characters and a compelling plot. In artfully crafted language, Zacharias portrays a world both frightening and beautiful, a place where often unforeseen and uncontrollable factors can nevertheless lead us to self-knowledge and love. n
PHOTOGRAPH BY Mathew WaEhner; courtesy of NC office of archives and history
After nineteen books in her Judge Deborah Knott mystery series – the first of which, Bootlegger’s Daughter (1992), received both the Edgar and the Agatha Awards – Margaret Maron received the 2013 R. Hunt Parker Memorial Award for her significant contribution to North Carolina literature. A native of Guilford County who grew up in Johnston County, NC, Maron is also the author of an earlier crime series set in New York, though the detective in those mysteries has North Carolina roots, too – and, in fact, meets up with Judge Knott in ThreeDay Town (2011). Maron’s other books include Last Lessons of Summer (2003), which received the 2004 Sir Walter Raleigh Award. Maron is also the 2008 recipient of the North Carolina Award for Literature. n
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