October 26, 2022

Winds of Discontent
Don Meyer
D. P. Meyer Publishing (2022)
ISBN: 979-8-218-03511-2

New Novel Explores How French Indochina War Led to Vietnam War

Winds of Discontent is the latest historical novel from the pen of Don Meyer, an author known for writing about war and its effects upon the people who get caught up in it. Some of his previous novels, such as The Kittridge Manuscript and The American War, had a combination of the Civil War and the Vietnam War as their focus. This time, however, Meyer’s history is focused on one time period, the two decades between World War II and the Vietnam War, and the events during those decades, including the French-Indochina War that led to the Vietnam War.

I believe many Americans, myself included, will feel this is a period of history they know little about, but I was all the more fascinated with the book for that reason because it helped fill in a large gap in my knowledge. While events of the Vietnam War are well known, it is less well known what led up to that war. I only vaguely had some sense that the French had been in Vietnam. The fact is that the country had been a French colony prior to World War II. Then it was occupied by Japan during World War II, and then again by the French after the war, but with the backing of the United States. After World War II, rebel groups were fighting for Vietnamese freedom and Communist China was backing them. Eventually, this led to the French Indochina War, also known as the First Indochina War (1946-1954) and the 1954 Geneva Armistice Agreement to end it. After the war, France withdrew from Vietnam and the country was divided into North and South Vietnam with South Vietnam becoming a republic. North Vietnam then invaded neighboring Laos and would eventually invade South Vietnam, causing the United States to become actively involved, thus starting the Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War.

Meyer’s story is set against this backdrop, and while much of this history may be unfamiliar to the reader, over the course of 320 pages and twenty years of history, the plot unwinds in a manner that educates while entertaining by presenting realistic characters the reader comes to care about.

The story begins soon after World War II when nineteen-year-old Sinclair Langdon, who is British, arrives in Vietnam on a ship after running away from home. Sinclair’s father is in the military and has now been stationed in China, but Sinclair is tired of military life, so he has taken passage on the first ship possible, not caring where it is destined. Once he arrives in Hanoi, Vietnam, he needs money. He soon meets Frenchy, a Frenchman who is delivering machine parts and needs assistance, so Sinclair agrees to the job. It doesn’t take long for Sinclair to realize Frenchy is actually smuggling weapons to the Vietnamese rebels who are fighting the French who occupy their homeland. Since he needs the money, Sinclair doesn’t shy away from the danger or adventure.

Sinclair also meets Edward Bourke, a British reporter who masquerades as an alcoholic so he can overhear conversations people otherwise wouldn’t have in front of him. Once Bourke confesses to Sinclair his drunkenness is all an act, he enlists him as a resource to supply him with information for his news reports regarding the rebels. Now Sinclair has two jobs and it looks like he’s destined to stay in Vietnam.

But the deciding factor for Sinclair in staying is Yvonne, a young woman with a French father and Vietnamese mother, whom he quickly falls in love with. The book gets a bit spicy here, though it never becomes graphic. Yvonne quickly offers herself to Sinclair out of gratitude to him for defending her when someone is rude to her in the street because she is of mixed French and Vietnamese blood. Sinclair is a bit surprised by her forwardness, but he understands it once she shares her past. As someone of mixed race, she was taken hostage by the Japanese and trained to pleasure their soldiers. She fears Sinclair will reject her because of her past, but Sinclair understands she had no choice in the matter and soon begins a committed relationship with her. Yvonne’s mother is not happy about the relationship and her French father intends to marry Yvonne to a French officer. This results in a long-term clandestine relationship between Sinclair and Yvonne; they are physically apart from each other for months at a time, but they always remain true to each other and are together when they can be.

Sinclair continues his work smuggling and reporting, and he eventually gets himself involved in other military and political affairs in Vietnam. One of the novel’s most dramatic events is when Sinclair walks the Ho Chi Minh Trail in disguise for two months so he can report on how North Vietnam is using the trail to bring supplies from the north to the south. Such undercover reporting leads to Sinclair becoming a respected journalist, although it also causes problems in his relationship with Yvonne, who worries about his safety.

While the novel is primarily set in Vietnam, the characters do move around quite a bit. Sinclair makes several trips to Paris to see Yvonne when she moves there with her husband, and he also works in London, where his and Bourke’s newspaper is based. Eventually, after the French leave Vietnam and the communists take over, the main characters are forced to leave Hanoi in North Vietnam and make their way south to Saigon.

The novel ends on the brink of the Vietnam War. Readers learn about how the United States became involved in the area, first by supporting the French and then the Republic of South Vietnam, as well as the French feelings toward the Americans after they lose their colony. The assassination of President Kennedy is worked into the plot to suggest a new conspiracy theory about his death that relates to the start of the Vietnam War.

While I enjoyed all the adventure and romance in the novel, I also really enjoyed the humor. Sinclair is not very proficient at French, so we see him struggling just to order breakfast in a restaurant and the food that results. Meyer works in French sentences and even some Vietnamese ones to give authenticity to the novel, but he also translates many so the reader never feels lost. I found it fun in these instances to test my French and was pleased to see I understood most of it. The romance between Yvonne and Sinclair also has its humorous moments, both in how they flirt with each other, and in how their friend Simone continually works to help them arrange their secret meetings. In fact, Simone becomes one of the most memorable characters, always ready to help someone find a way to have a good time sexually or otherwise.

Some readers might frown on how Sinclair and Yvonne commit adultery in the novel, but given the circumstances they face, Meyer makes it believable and sympathetic. Since they remain loyal to each other throughout, and Yvonne is loving and attentive to her husband as well, in the end their relationship ends up having a noble aspect.

The only fault of the book really is that there are more errors than there should be—mostly punctuation errors in relation to the dialogue, but also the occasional missing word or sentence fragment, though some of those may simply be the author’s style. The errors did not interfere with my enjoyment of the story, but they should have been fixed before publication.

Altogether, Winds of Discontent is a novel that does what good historical fiction should do. It makes a period from the past come to life, helping us understand what it was like to live through the time and events it brings to life. It teaches us about history and even more about people and how they are affected by the events around them and the choices they are forced to make. I know for a long time to come I will wonder what happened to Sinclair and Yvonne once the Vietnam War began. Perhaps someday Meyer will satisfy that curiosity with a sequel.

For more information about Winds of Discontent and Don Meyer’s other books, visit www.dpmeyer.com.

— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and Award-Winning Author of When Teddy Came to Town