An update:
I have finished reading A Short Ride in the Jungle by Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent which turned out to be a surprisingly good read, and as I said in my earlier post, it was way better than I expected given her background and fancy name (proving that I should not judge an author by their name, I mean Zoe Cano... fabulous name and a very poor read (Boneville or Bust)).
Ant (Antonia) obviously has a bit of an obsession around the Indo-Asia wars from 1945 through to today focused on the senseless injustice of American involvement and the bombing that they inflicted upon the natives on the ground, and with the American failure to then clear up the UXO that is still there today claiming innocent lives. At times this fixation gets close to spoiling the storyline, but it always stops just short of that and ends up enhancing the reader experience. Personally I would have liked just a little bit more about her journey but I have to accept there is only so much you can write about bumping over rocks, grinding through mud or buzzing along a tarmac road while still keeping the reader's interest.
So if, like me, you are old enough to remember seeing the nightly BBC news broad casts coving the American war in Vietnam, then this book is both a reminder and an insight into what went on and is still going on today under the communist regime. If you are younger and have no idea what inhumane stupidity politicians can inflict on their countrymen and women and those in far off and distant places in order to line their own pockets then this has to be on your list of books to read. It is well researched (and by that I do not mean Google) and written from the heart, full of the author's passion for the subject, her experiences, observations and the emotions triggered at the time.
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