On The Ho Chi Minh Trail

Part travelogue, part history, and part reflective meditation on conflict and reconciliation, Sherry Buchanan's new book offers both a personal and historical exploration of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, highlighting the critical role the Trail and the  young women soldiers who helped build and defend it played in the Vietnam War. Accompanied by two travelling companions, Buchanan winds her way from Hanoi in the north to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, in the south. Driving through the spectacular scenery of Vietnam and Laos, she encounters locations from the Truong Son mountains, the Phong Nha Caves, ancient citadels and Confucian temples to the Khmer Temple of Wat Phu at the western-most point of the Trail in Laos. Buchanan records her interactions – both scheduled and spontaneous – with those who experienced the Vietnam War firsthand, and these conversations with combatants and civilians provide new perspectives on the War. She listens to the women who defended the Trail roads against the greatest bombing campaign in modern times, walks through minefields with the demolition teams hunting for unexploded ordnance, and meets American veterans who have returned to Vietnam with an urge to "do something". Buchanan weaves informative, and often humorous, tales from her journey with excerpts from the accounts of others, situating the locations she visits in their historical and political context. On the Ho Chi Minh Trail brings together geography, history, and personal accounts to readdress the culture of indifference to the War, bringing to light the scale of the tragedy, its lasting legacies, and our memory of it.