Funds earned at the liquor store and the restaurant, along with those from the General’s charitable organization, the Benevolent Fraternity of Former Soldiers of the Republic of Vietnam, help to fund a guerrilla army that plans to take back control of Vietnam from the Communists. Though she never bothered to cook in her home country, due to the plenitude of servants, her relatively modest life in the United States requires her to do more household chores, in which she discovers her talent for cooking. Meanwhile, Madame opens a pho restaurant. The General opens a liquor store a year after his arrival, where he employs Bon. The narrator also reunites with his old college chum, Sonny, who edits a Vietnamese-language newspaper. Though the narrator thinks that she has talent in addition to being very attractive, Lana’s parents are scandalized by her onstage persona, which they believe will ruin her chances for marriage. When the narrator reunites with her, she’s living in Brentwood and working at an art gallery, while also pursuing a singing career. Lana left Vietnam to attend the University of California, Berkeley. At a wedding between the daughter of a Vietnamese marine colonel and the son of the vice president of the Saigon branch of Bank of America, the narrator sees the General and Madame’s eldest child, Lan, who goes by Lana, for the first time since she was a girl.
The narrator occasionally works for the General, too, though not for pay, as a chauffeur. He also meets the secretary of the department, Ms.
There, the narrator reacquaints himself with American racism and the fetishization of Asian people. With the help of his former professor at Occidental College, Avery Wright Hammer, the narrator secures a job working for the Department Chair of the college’s Department of Oriental Studies. The narrator, the General, Madame, and Bon settle in Los Angeles. The narrator hurries Bon onto the waiting plane, which first lands in Guam, and later at Camp Pendleton in San Diego. When he turns around to look for them, he sees that Bon is sitting on the ground, cradling the bodies of his wife and son. During the sprint, the narrator notices that Bon and his family have fallen behind.
The surviving refugees flee toward another plane, originally intended for active-duty U.S. However, an attack on the airfield, which may have come either from the Viet Cong or from disgruntled South Vietnamese soldiers, destroys the plane. government prepares C-130 planes for the escape. The narrator puts together a list of select staff members who will also be allowed to board this plane, which will include the narrator’s other “blood brother” Bon, Bon’s wife, Linh, and their son, Duc. Claude, the narrator’s mentor and a CIA agent, arranges for the General and Madame, a politically powerful South Vietnamese couple, to escape from Saigon with their immediate and extended family.
The narrator recalls the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. The narrator describes himself to the Commandant, who has imprisoned him at a detention camp in North Vietnam, as “a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces.” The narrator is both a captain in the South Vietnamese Army and a spy for the North Vietnamese, acting under the instruction of Man, one of his “blood brothers.”
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