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The Atmosphere of War
Sawadika American Girl follows an American teenager in Vietnam War-era Bangkok, as music, first love, and shared sorrow help her find a place for grief, longing, and belonging. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Most people aren’t aware that during the Vietnam War, Thailand served as a major US military outpost, with over eight military bases scattered throughout the kingdom. In addition, thousands of American families lived in Bangkok with fathers who worked for the American Embassy, USAID, the CIA, the US Military, and as private contractors. All in direct or indirect support of the war effort. On top of that, in 1968, the year my novel takes place, nearly 5,000 GI’s were pouring into Bangkok each month on R&R, bringing their turmoil with them. This created a ‘little America’ that was complex and combustible and often at odds with Thai sensibilities and culture. Having grown up in Thailand, I understood these underlying tensions and knew it was fertile ground for a story. Making it a coming-of-age story with a 17-year-old female protagonist struck me as a powerful and unexpected way to shed light on this overlooked pocket of history.
Music feels central to Piper’s emotional life; how did you approach writing piano as both technique and feeling?
Music anchors Piper emotionally in a world that doesn’t make sense. The act of playing the piano becomes a private space where she works out her emotions. Her piano teacher is a Thai Prince who had studied with the great Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau. Arrau’s technique was legendary for centering the body for maximum emotional expression. This is what the Prince teaches Piper. Her efforts to master this technique symbolize her struggle to come to terms with what is going on in her life.
The character of the Thai Prince who studied with Arrau is based on a piano teacher I had. There was a vibrant classical music scene in Bangkok at this time. Renowned musicians had Bangkok on their concert tours. This made sense because the Thai King was a talented jazz musician and composed his own music. And as a young girl, the Queen studied classical piano in Paris. I love that thread of the story because no one expects it, but it is absolutely true.
Jack and Piper’s relationship is brief but deeply affecting. What did you want their connection to reveal about war, loneliness, and belonging?
Life is always precious. But war, even the atmosphere of war, perverts that value, making life more precious and less precious at the same time. Piper and Jack experience this intensity from different vantage points, but each is tuned in to the sense of loneliness and dislocation that proximity to war brings. Most of the story unfolds during a single week, about the length of a soldier’s R&R. Under such conditions, time stretches. Three, four, or even five days together mean everything. That perception of time is woven into the fabric of their relationship.
How did you balance the intimate story of Piper’s coming of age with the larger historical forces surrounding her?
The bulk of the novel unfolds over a single week in 1968. That is on purpose. The assassinations of MLK and Robert Kennedy had happened, the Tet Offensive had occurred, and the casualty rate for soldiers and civilians in Vietnam was at a high point. All of that darkened the mood for Americans working in Bangkok. There were tensions with the Thai government. As a dependent, this increased the pressure for Piper to behave a certain way and not put a foot wrong. That kind of control is at odds with an individual’s ability to come of age, which is by definition about asserting one’s independence in a way that produces some kind of personal and intimate transformation. This put Piper on a collision course with the forces around her.
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One night, Piper ditches the American Teen Club to party with an older crowd. Sparks fly when she meets Jack, a 19-year-old GI on R&R from Vietnam. Defying the Army’s non-fraternization policy, they pledge to spend his leave together. As the hypocrisy of the war closes in on them, Jack’s name surfaces in a drug investigation and Piper discovers a disturbing truth about her father, forcing both to decide what they are willing to risk for a few more days together.
Sawadika American Girl is the story of a young American woman coming-of-age on the periphery of a brutal, unjust war.
Sawadika American Girl
Sawadika American Girl is a tender, immersive coming-of-age novel about Piper Lewis, an American teenager growing up in Bangkok during the Vietnam War. Daria Sommers frames Piper’s story through the lens of a Third Culture Kid, then drops us into a city where embassy life, military R&R, Thai domestic rhythms, teenage longing, and the war’s long shadow all exist side by side. The book’s world feels lived in, from samlors and monsoon air to piano lessons in a Thai prince’s compound.
At the heart of the novel is Piper’s search for a place to put her grief, talent, anger, and desire. Music gives her that place. Her lessons with Prince Suriwongse are some of the book’s strongest scenes because they turn piano technique into emotional language. When he tells her, “You think too much Piper. Won’t work that way,” it works as more than advice about Beethoven. It’s also a way of reading Piper herself, a girl trying to control feelings that keep slipping past her.
The novel also becomes a brief, intense love story when Piper meets Jack Gallagher, a nineteen-year-old soldier on R&R from Vietnam. Their connection works because Sommers doesn’t treat it like a fantasy escape. Jack brings the war with him, Piper brings her loneliness and her complicated American life in Thailand, and together they create a small pocket of recognition. One of the book’s loveliest ideas is that belonging can appear suddenly, even in a place where no one fully belongs.
Sommers is especially good at showing how history filters into ordinary rooms: a stepmother’s pregnancy announcement in traffic, a teenage party, a protest outside the embassy, a piano lesson, a hotel lobby full of soldiers. The war isn’t just background scenery. It shapes where people live, what they believe, who they can love, and what they’re able to admit. The Prince’s explanation of khwam sao sok, “a sorrow many people have together,” becomes the book’s emotional key.
Sawadika American Girl has become a story about memory finding a home. Piper’s return to Jack’s name at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial gives the novel a quiet, earned release, because it finally gets witnessed. The book is historical fiction, a love story, a Bangkok novel, and a portrait of a young artist learning how to feel without looking away. It’s intimate, sensory, and generous with its characters, even when they’re lost.
Pages: 304 | ISBN: 3988322121
