In the Fabled East: A Novel

by Adam Lewis Schroeder

Overview

Bridging history from 1890s Aix-en-Provence to American involvement in 1950s Vietnam, In the Fabled East is a timeless love story and riveting adventure, charting the loss of innocence of both individuals and the world at large.

Adélie Tremier, a turn-of-the-century widower and socialite suffering from tuberculosis, flees Paris flees for French-occupied Indochina, to seek out a fabled spring of immortality in the Laotian jungle that might allow her to return to her nine-year-old son. Years later, Pierre Lazarie, a young academic turned Saigon bureaucrat, is sent by Adélie's grown son, now an army captain, to find this mysterious woman. Although his mission fulfills Pierre’s fantasy to travel up the exotic Mekong, he is saddled with his colleague Henri LeDallic, who would rather glory in booze and his loutish past than hunt for ghosts. This mismatched pair stumbles through the lush jungle in the faded footsteps of Adelie, where history and fable are intertwined.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781553656159
Publisher:	Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.
Publication date:	03/06/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Adam Lewis Schroeder completed a Master's degree in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia and has since traveled extensively. He is the author of the story collection Kingdom of Monkeys and the novel Empress of Asia. He lives in the Okanagan, British Columbia with his wife and two sons.

Read an Excerpt

From Ch. 2 "Her Photograph"

Pierre Lazarie



—LeDallic and Lazarie! announced Dubois.

—LeDallic has been here longer than anyone, said Frémont. The room was lined with windows looking out over the trees and boulevards from an angle that somehow revealed no people at all. We newcomers threw ourselves into the creaking wicker chairs.

—How long have you been with Immigration? the captain asked me. You look to be the junior partner.

He couldn’t have been past forty yet his broad forehead was deeply lined, with eyebrows set so far apart as to sit nearly on his temples. A physiognomist might’ve spent an entire semester on him. I tried unsuccessfully to meet his gaze and realized that his left eye was glass—it contemplated a potted fern in the corner.

—In truth, sir, I stammered, you find me on my first day at this—

—First day? the captain shouted at Dubois. Why’d you bring him into this?

—But you needn’t worry! I said. If my colleague’s expertise can’t help, I happen to be a specialist in Vietnamese military history prior to European involvement! The captain cracked his knuckles against the arm of his chair.

—When did you start here? he asked Henri.

—In 1911. I’d heard that girls in this country could be had for nothing.

—And can they?

—Yes.

—Captain Tremier, said Frémont, is hoping our records will lead him to locate his mother, a Madame Tremier, who landed in—which year? I can’t read my own writing.

—October, 1909, answered Dubois.

—First name Adélie, the captain said. Adélie Tremier.

—Does that mean something to you, LeDallic? asked Frémont.

—Just that it’s nearly lunch, said Henri.

—She’ll celebrate her fifty-sixth birthday before long, said the captain, but the fact remains I haven’t seen or heard from her in twenty-seven years. Now, I have confirmed that on August 29 of ’09 she sailed from Marseilles for Saigon aboard the Salazie, and I trust you fellows will be able to do more with that information than I have. I’ve been trying to trace her since I was ten years old, but until recently the Messageries Maritimes had misplaced the relevant records.

—Typical of their inefficient practice back there, murmured Frémont.

—I did check the civil registers with the Ministry before coming to you, even the Saigon telephone directory for 1910, so if she did stay on here I—well, I can’t imagine where! Forgive me. It’s very seldom that I talk about her.

He massaged those distinctive brows. His unwavering glass eye was able to contain its emotion.

—The Salazie docked here in one piece? asked Henri.

—It was sunk in 1912. A cyclone off Madagascar.

—If it had gone down sooner that might have resolved your query. At that Frémont fingered his pencil nervously. I fixed the captain’s good eye with my most professional gaze.

—And she… she departed in good health, twenty-seven years ago?

—Ah, said the captain. On the contrary, she spent the year before she went away convalescing from tuberculosis.

—Odds are she died en route then, Henri said. They threw her over to Poseidon.

—The good captain, announced Frémont, leaves for Haiphong tomorrow to join his new battalion, so you and Laramie—

—Lazarie, I said.

—The matter is in your hands. Locate her arrivals ledger, see where it leads you.

Henri twisted a rat-tail of hair between his fingers.

—But, now, you see, Captain Fornier, you really must picture the stinking piles of work upon our desks. If the dear woman’s indeed lost herself, surely the police, the secret police, will have—

—Henri, young Dubois said, this is the Department of Immigration for the Vice-Regency of Cochin-China—

—Yes, I’ve seen the letterhead, said Henri.

—And as we’ve told Captain Tremier, we have proved and will continue to prove ourselves capable regarding any matter called to our attention simply as a matter of pride. What’s more—and this point should hardly concern the captain—Paris has lately discussed how best to make each department better accountable, not only in light of economic conditions—

—Discord, said Frémont. These people’s laughable notion of self-government!

—Only a natural progression, said Dubois, as we shepherd the protectorate toward maturity. In coming months there will be audits at every level and, should we be found wanting, Paris of course has the power to ransack our funding, our staff, and apparently even our pensions.

—Our pensions! said Henri. Lazarie, you’re done for

—This “discord,” is that these Bolshevists? the captain asked. I’m meant to ferret them out around Haiphong.

—Their political stripe is irrelevant, said Dubois. They’re only youngsters looking for excitement.

—Same boys at home would be content to get drunk, said Frémont.

—To whom exactly are we referring? I asked. Is this some tribal group?

—Here’s a useful professor! said Henri. Every idiot knows there are Bolshevik rats filling Paris, didn’t they come fill your academic ears with all their talk of Indo-Chinese autonomy and a free drink special if ordered before five o’clock?

—Our faculty is aware that something is afoot, I said. But there’s no way to make a study of a thing while it’s still unfolding, is there? Perspective is required if we—

—I’ve met with the police about them any number of times, announced Frémont, and I do find the whole situation rather tiring. These are sons of rich men, landowners, these are native boys without a care in the world, yet they run their mouths about independence and they do it right in Paris, in the lion’s den, because they know how soft the courts are back there— for a conversation that’d draw the death penalty here no one so much as blinks. Now any number of them are trying to sneak home and we’re expected to catch them, despite their slipping in under assumed names and dressed as fishermen. And I would like to catch them! I shouldn’t like to see what happens to my Michelin dividends if a lot of hoodlums burn a plantation down!

—The death penalty? I asked. For a conversation?

—Certainly! said Frémont. Hangings by the dozen.

—If we may return the topic to my mother, the captain said, I have an item which may prove useful.

From his breast pocket he drew a photograph in a small oval frame and leaned across to place it in my hand. No one spoke, though Henri’s chair creaked peevishly. The picture showed a smiling couple and long-haired child in a white pinafore; the man appeared to be in the act of graduating from the Sorbonne.

—Look at the regalia, I said. Your father was an engineer! Around 1905, judging by her blouse—I’ve a picture of my mother in a number just like it. This is you, isn’t it?

—I was the only child.

—It’s not hard to see he’s your father, with those eyes of his. Ah, and your mother, yes. Striking.

Henri rose to look over my shoulder: the future captain upon her knee, Adélie Tremier flashed white teeth at the camera while her masses of black hair gave the impression, even in that diminutive portrait, of a gale gusting around her. And there was a particular squint to her eyes that somehow spoke to me, despite every likelihood the woman had been dead two decades, of lust.

Editorial Reviews

Schroeder's (Empress of Asia) latest is a historical adventure spanning from the late 19th century to the 1950s, set in the dramatic and mystical former French Indochina. Adélie Tremier is a Parisian widow dedicated to her son Emanuel. An orphan herself, she resolves to stick by her son and survive her tuberculosis. She eventually leaves nine-year-old Emanuel behind to head East in seek of a cure, with hopes of returning in health. Decades later in Laos, Pierre Lazarie, an academic sent to Saigon, is hired by Emanuel to find his long-lost mother. Though the chances of her having survived seem slim, Pierre and his partner Henri LeDallic embark on a journey through the vivid and exotically illustrated East. The novel shifts between Adélie and Pierre's points of view, with the storylines carefully building upon each other and conveying a sense of the search for the missing, ephemeral woman. Though Schroeder's considerable research is evident and the descriptions beautifully written, the abundance of information and sensory detail distract from the actual plot. The result feels more like a history lesson, and unfortunately keeps the reader at a distance. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Shortlisted in the for the 2011 regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize
An Indie Next selection

"An unforgettable tour of colonial Vietnam, connecting characters and storylines from 1870s France to the aftermath of Dien Bien Phu with skill and authority, moving with insight and wit from the ordinary to the mythological without a seam. A fabulous piece of writing."—Karl Marlantes, author of Matterhorn

"A novel of profound intelligence and wit, deftly weaving history and myth, male and female, East and West, agony and splendour. In the Fabled East is a stunning book."—Annabel Lyon, author of The Golden Mean

“Schroeder's considerable research is evident and the descriptions beautifully written”— Publishers Weekly

“an imaginative and symbolic novel that stimulates all of the senses” —St. Louis Today

“The author demonstrates a strong sense of place with well-written descriptive passages that make readers feel they are right there in colonial Indochina with the protagonists.”—Library Journal Express

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