The House on Dream Street Memoir of an American Woman in Vietnam

A “vividly detailed” memoir of traveling to the formerly forbidden country and exploring life and culture in Hanoi (Kirkus Reviews). For years after the Vietnam War, Americans were unable to visit the country, so once tourist visas became available, young Dana Sachs eagerly applied. Born in the early 1960s, she had little memory of the war and its history, but yearned to know more about this Southeast Asian nation, with its odd mix of capitalism and communism and its streets crowded with bicycles. In this unusual travel memoir, she recounts arriving as a backpacker in the late 1980s; moving in with a family and earning her keep by teaching English; encountering a salesman offering remains of American “poes and meeas”—which she finally recognizes as “POWs and MIAs”—and falling for a motorcycle mechanic named Phai. The House on Dream Street is a warm, witty portrait of a country on the cusp of change—and of a woman learning to know her own heart. “Engrossing . . . Sachs bravely renders Vietnam through fresh eyes.” —Publishers Weekly