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Ripple effect
Karlin's book follows woman's search for roots in Vietnam
Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2008
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Author Wayne Karlin's latest book, "Marble Mountain," tells the story of a woman's search for her past in Vietnam. Karlin is an English professor at the College of Southern Maryland and has written nine books.
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Like a rock dropped in a pond and the ripples caused by that impact – that's how Wayne Karlin sees the effect of the Vietnam War.
There's the direct damage of soldiers dying and soldiers killing others. And then there are waves of collateral and generational damage, including how those soldiers are changed as they return home, how their relationships and even their children are affected, Karlin said from his office at the College of Southern Maryland in Leonardtown, where he is a member of the English department faculty.
The war and its effect has been a central theme to both Karlin's life as a veteran of the conflict and as a writer. His seventh novel (ninth book) was released last month. "Marble Mountain," is about these "ripples in the pond," years after the war. The book reintroduces several characters from a previous novel, "Prisoners."
"What I was trying to do … was show how the damages of war affect so many different kinds of people … generations," Karlin, a longtime resident of St. Mary's City, said.
"Marble Mountain" is the story of Kiet Hallam, an adopted daughter of half-African American and half-Vietnamese descent, who goes on a search for the story of the earliest part of her life.
As the offspring of a relationship between an American soldier and a native of Vietnam during the war, the story takes Kiet from her home with her adopted family in Southern Maryland and then back to the country of her birth.
Her adoptive father, Alex Hallam – a Vietnam veteran working out his own conflicted feelings about that period in his life – also travels to Vietnam, to Marble Mountain.
The book is part detective novel, as Kiet has to sift through the clues that lead to her beginnings. It is also a story about an emotional trip for both Kiet and her father, as they each deal with ghosts from the past.
Though this is a work of fiction, Karlin knows well the real Marble Mountains — a formation near Danang — from his service as a helicopter gunner in HMM-164, 1st Marine Air Wing, in Vietnam from 1966 to 1967.
It is an experience that defined his subsequent writing. Tim O'Brien, another writer known for his work about the Vietnam era, has described Karlin "as one of the most gifted writers to emerge from the war."
Karlin believes that the arts can help deal with the wide-ranging effects caused by war. "Marble Mountain" reflects that belief in "the potential healing power in art – using art to confront," Karlin said.
Kiet is a dancer. Drama, sculpture and photography are all art forms also used in "Marble Mountain" to reveal clues and to express this conflict that has so captured Karlin's own attention.
"The damages of the war go on. They need to be confronted, but they're not all going to be resolved by the end of the book," he said. "Kiet's able by confronting her own past, she's able to grow up in terms of her father … It's very complex, and it's supposed to be. It's also not completely bleak and hopeless."
Calling Karlin's latest novel "a vital book," Maxine Hong Kingston, an Asian-American author, commended "Marble Mountain" in a review, saying "There's a new war on, and little learning from the old wars, particularly the American war in Viet Nam, the long war whose consequences we can't seem to shake off. Through the points-of-view of veterans – their side and ours – and one of their offspring … The reader of ‘Marble Mountain' goes on a journey of understanding and possible forgiveness."
