The lotus is a staple in many Asian cultures. My mother uses its roots in a soup, where it emanates a subtle, fulfilling sweetness different from that of the oversaturated processed sugars. These roots find hold in muddy lakebeds while the lotus flower floats atop with its pink and white blossoms unstained against the murky waters, a symbol for purity, innocence, and perseverance. Besides all that though, I think it’s just a pretty flower, whose presence in every pond I had taken for granted before moving to America.

The Lotus and the Storm begins at the city of Saigon in South Vietnam during the war, where our protagonist Mai is still a young girl growing up. In the city she has been sheltered from the fighting happening across the country while the war is locked in a standstill, a lotus in the eye of the storm. We are led to see and think about the world through her eyes, mostly bound to her lovely family–a bold, brilliant older sister, a loving mother, and a father who is often absent as a paratrooper for the war but is nevertheless a strong source of parental love.

Outside of this blithe little world however, the storm is darkening. The novel alternates to the perspective of Mai’s father, and through him we get a glimpse into the grim situation of their country. Following a political coup, he narrowly escapes execution thanks to an intervention by his best friend, who had defected to the side of the coup plotters.

Aside from the alternating perspective between Mai and her father, the novel additionally alternates the timeline. Decades later, the two, now a grown woman and an old man, are living in a small enclave in America. We gather that they are alone, and are left to wonder what happened to the big sister and the mother–a subject that neither is willing to talk about. The joyous mood of the opening quickly evaporates as the theme of loss is explored.

The timelines converge as the novel progresses, culminating in a series of revelations that I can only describe as shocking and disturbing. The glaring pattern behind all of them is betrayal, which has the effect of destroying the simplicity of the established families and friendships within the world of this novel. Like Mai was in the story, I was led on to believe in such a simple world, a world where families remain whole no matter what, a world where friends help each other out of nothing but loyalty, a world in which there is an easy line to draw between good and evil, friend and enemy. In hindsight it should have been obvious that all was not as it seemed. Each revelation made me recall striking details in young Mai’s tellings of events, and I realized that the morbid clues were there all along, clues which Mai and myself were too naive to piece together. As I thought about and re-read some of those parts, it felt like the story took on a new dimension. The motivations of the characters suddenly became immensely complex, and everything had to be re-evaluated in this new light. Despite all of the treachery being laid out however, there are no truly evil characters to be found, only characters whose flaws and circumstances drive them to act badly.

This was an astounding novel, one of tragedy and heartfelt sorrow, with a plot that ran deeper and deeper each time I thought I had unraveled it all. At its core is a story about growing up and discovering that the world was not so innocent after all, the struggle to cope with such a dark reality, and the journey of finally being able to come to terms with the past.