M. Hasan Rajab Livres

Nathan Monroe is a 28-year-old American living in Saigon who falls in love with a poor but talented Vietnamese painter. When he fails to protect their love from her desperate chase for a better life in America, his safety net appears in the form of Anthony, an old domineering friend in Hanoi who hires Nathan at his real estate firm. Only much later does Nathan discover that Anthony has intended all along for him to take over his job and family so that he, too, can escape and start his life over in America. Lotusland dramatizes the power imbalances between Westerners living abroad and between Westerners and Vietnamese -- in love and friendship, in the consequences of war, and in the pursuit of dreams.

After Nozomi abandons Sedge and their marriage, taking all their money and leaving him with a ceramics shop he can't manage alone, her brother and his wife offer him a lifeline at their Japanese hot spring inn until he can get back on his feet. As he proceeds forward from this devastation in his life, he becomes involved with the wife of the man Nozomi ran off with as well as her stepson, a troubled 16-year-old whose jealousy and potential for violence contrasts with his interest in birds, origami, and the haiku of Matsuo Basho. What unfolds in the shadow of "the immortal mountain of cranes" will change their lives forever. Set in Kanazawa and Yamanaka Onsen near the Sea of Japan, The Heron Catchers explores the importance of recognizing suffering both in others and in oneself, of being compassionate, and of trusting those who offer love in the shattering wake of loss. The Heron Catchers is the second in a series of novels set in and around the Japanese city of Kanazawa.

"Seemingly disparate phenomena, murder-suicide, suicide-by-cop, suicide terrorism, amok, most spree killings, death-row volunteering, and even physician-assisted suicide share a commonality: All are at bottom suicidal in their origin and motive"--