SOURCE: "Starting Over," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, September 14, 1997, p. 10.

[In the following review, Coburn praises Cao's insightful and at times lyrical writing, despite the flaws she finds in the plot.]

A monkey bridge—three bamboo stalks lashed with vines—figures in two of this novel's turning points. Apparitions: A man first sees his wife-to-be in white silk fluttering above him on such a bridge; a trapped American Marine glimpses through the mist the figure of a Vietnamese friend floating above a minefield and signaling the way out of the lethal maze.

In Monkey Bridge, the first novel by Vietnamese American writer Lan Cao, Vietnamese refugees, the relatives they left behind and the Americans they meet reach for each other across just such a simple and magical connection.

It's the late 1970s, and teenager Mai Nguyen has been settled in northern Virginia with her mother since fleeing...