Quang's Books

A Sense of Duty is available through bookstores and online retailers. CLICK HERE TO BUY THE BOOK!

Hardcover: 288 pages; Publisher: Ballantine Books (April 12, 2005) ISBN: 0891418733

Overview: In 1964, Hoa Pham, a South Vietnamese fighter pilot, was shot down by Viet Cong antiaircraft fire while flying in support of American forces and rescued. When Saigon fell to the communists, his 10-year-old son, Quang, escaped with his mother and three sisters to America. Thirty years later, Quang, now a U.S. Marine pilot turned successful entrepreneur, retraces a uniquely spirited yet agonizing journey from the Vietnam War to peace, from blame to forgiveness, and an eventual surprise reunion with his father who survived 12 years in post-war prison camps. A Sense of Duty explores the inner conflicts of a young man caught in the often contradictory forces of national identity, loyalty, truth and trust in the aftermath of America's most divisive war. It reveals the turmoil of a family torn apart and reunited by the fortunes of war. It is an American journey like no other.

First Sentence: "I was born a Vietnamese in an old French hospital six months before President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered thousands of U.S. Marines into my country."

Finalist for the 2005 Southern California Independent Booksellers Association Book Award

Praise for A Sense of Duty

"From Vietnam to California to the 1991 Gulf War and back, this is a great story of our time. I gained a deeper understanding of our country from reading it. I also was struck by the author's question: Why haven't our leaders done more to recognize and help the Vietnamese soldiers who fought alongside our own troops, and gave up everything?" –Thomas E. Ricks, military correspondent, The Washington Post and author of the #1 bestseller Fiasco

"A book that Americans and the young generation of Vietnamese Americans must read to understand the immense sacrifices of the Vietnamese people."
–Bui Diem, former Ambassador of South Vietnam to the U.S.

"Quang Pham has written a superb account of the remarkable journey he and his family experienced. As someone who lived and fought with the South Vietnamese forces and witnessed Quang's outstanding service in the US Marine Corps, it was an exceptionally moving read. Every American should read this wonderful story to better appreciate the freedoms we enjoy."
–General Anthony C. Zinni, USMC (Retired)

"Telling this story is important so that this generation and future generations may learn and participate in the debate and history of the war...a crucial task, done with a detailed, insightful touch by Mr. Pham."
–Yen Ngoc Do, publisher, Nguoi Viet Daily News (1941–2006)

"Poignant and powerful." –W.E.B. Griffin, bestselling novelist

"Quang Pham is a splendid writer who has lived a richly resonant life...a brilliant memoirist and a brilliant memoir indeed. He has opened up parts of the Vietnamese soul that I am happy to see and the transcendent human heart as well. Anyone of any race, ethnicity, culture or political philosophy can be moved and changed by this lovely book." –Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer-Prize winner

"Quang X. Pham's memoir on parallel tracks—his life, and his family's, in Vietnam and then America—is a story of hardship, separation, and loss, but ultimately also of courage, loyalty, patriotism and achievement, an inspiring human story movingly told." –Lewis Sorley, author of A Better War

"There's no heartbreak as enduring as that of a refugee who can never go home because his home is gone. You can feel it in the words of this book, and they will stay with you for a long time. A Sense of Duty is at once painful, self-aware and finally transcendent." –T. Jefferson Parker, bestselling novelist

"Quang X. Pham brilliantly encapsulates the relationship of America and Vietnam in the late 20th Century. There's a lot here for Americans to ponder, particularly those who may never have heard of a Saigon where the cause was righteous, and its true believers were South Vietnamese soldiers and airmen who fought with courage and commitment, refusing to concede the 'inevitable' defeat."
– Richard Pyle, former chief of AP's Saigon bureau and author

"A profoundly moving narrative. Pham tells his story at times with detachment and at other times with passion but always with refreshing candor. His judgments on the Vietnam conflict, growing up in America, fitting-in to a strange world (and to little league baseball) in Southern California, manage to make the reader smiles at one moment and winces at the next."
–Larry Engelmann, author of Tears Before the Rain

"This is a remarkable book...a deeply moving account, written with great nuance, of one family's experience in becoming American."
–Franklin S. Odo, Director of the Smithsonian Asian-Pacific American Program