Excerpt from The Eaves of Heaven by Andrew X. Pham, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

As soon as we started talking about my academic records, he switched over to French. I liked it because I felt more comfortable in French when speaking with superiors and elders. French was more egalitarian than Viet. It was generous of him. Besides, it was natural for us to speak French, since it had been the official language of academia in Vietnam for longer than we had been alive. Generations of Vietnamese students spent lifetimes in classrooms speaking, writing, reading, and breathing French texts. So it did not seem ironic to me then that we sat there, two North Vietnamese exiles in a dark and greasy noodle shop on the edge of Saigon, conversing in French when neither one of us had ever set foot in France. We both had suits of Parisian cut and sported Western haircuts, and were more well-read in French poetry and European literature than most French soldiers. And yet, if we saw a Frenchman strolling toward us, we might, out of revulsion, cross the road to avoid him. The language had become a condition of our lives. It did not occur to us to scorn it or discard it from our tongues. It would have been impossible to try.

As the principal started talking about his school, his quaint town, and the fine French things he enjoyed, I thought of the manicured villas around our neighborhood in Hanoi; the fabulous bistros my father frequented with the whole family; the bouillabaisse, the croissants, and the ice cream. The best times of my life in Hanoi came flitting back into my head. Soon I was swimming in romanticism, drawing parallels between Hanoi and Phan Thiet, even though the most I'd seen of Phan Thiet until then had been little sketches on the labels of fish sauce bottles. As for the looks of the town or its people, I hadn't a clue, although I imagined it to be some idyllic fishing village of white beaches lined with coconut palms, maybe with an ice cream parlor where I could enjoy a peach melba after a swim.

"Most of my teachers are moonlighting from the public schools. You won't feel alone," he said after we had chatted amiably for about an hour. "I only have three teachers on my permanent staff, and this position is for the only full-time science-math teacher for the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades. It's only three morning classes and the job comes with room and board. Do you think you're ready to teach?"

"Yes, sir."

"Congratulations, you've got the job. With your father's permission, we'll start you in your own classroom next week."

My father was concerned, with good reason, that a job far from home might sidetrack me from my goal of a higher education. However, he disapproved of my recent involvement in students' political demonstrations, some of which had turned violent. He knew that a summer out of town would keep me out of trouble. On top of that, we needed the money. Our pho restaurant, my father's ill-conceived attempt to bring northern cooking to the southerners, was on the verge of collapse, taking with it the last bit of a mighty family fortune that went back many generations. We had lost everything in the fall of Hanoi. With financial catastrophe looming, he swallowed his protests and made me promise that I would write every week and return to attend Saigon University in the fall.

To escape, I would have promised him all the fish in the Saigon River.

On the 28th of July, two years ago, my family had fled Hanoi in a huge Dakota cargo plane. We were traveling with my stepmother's parents and their other daughter, who was my age. The cargo hold was packed with refugees sitting on the baseboard of the plane and clinging to straps and netting. We landed at Saigon's airport. Disoriented after a long and turbulent flight, we stumbled off the plane, anxious to get out of the cramped hold and put our feet on the ground again. Half the people were covered in vomit. We huddled in the shade of the plane, each toting a single allotted valise, and squinted at our new homeland. It felt like a foreign country.

Excerpted from The Eaves of Heaven by Andrew X. Pham. Copyright © 2008 by Andrew X. Pham. Excerpted by permission of Harmony Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.