Mango Rains, A Novella with Anne H. Oman

Anne H. Oman began her career as a Foreign Service Officer for the now-defunct US Information Agency, which was charged with "winning the people's hearts and minds." She served in Cambodia and Indonesia and was expelled from both countries, for political, not personal, reasons.

Anne has worked principally as a journalist. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, The Washington Star, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Times, Washington Woman, Family Circle, Sailing, National Geographic World, and Senior Scholastic. She is currently a Reporter At Large for the Fernandina Observer in Fernandina Beach, Florida.

Anne has published four non-fiction books. Mango Rains is her first novella. The story takes us back to 1963, to a sleepy Southeast Asian backwater, in Bienvenue á Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, a former French colony ruled by a famously mercurial Prince. Though a war rages next door in VietNam, life in the Cambodian capital seems peaceful, and no one has heard of Pol Pot or envisions the horrors to come with the Khmer Rouge.

As the gentle mango rains give way to the violence of the monsoon, world events – the self-immolation of the Buddhist monks in Saigon, the coup in VietNam, and the assassination of President Kennedy – precipitate a crisis that scatters the characters in the story to the far corners of the globe: VietNam, Indonesia, India, and Africa. The events are seen through the eyes of Julia Galbraith, a newly arrived American Foreign Service Officer. Her journal chronicles the insular expatriate community's doings, love affairs and heartbreaks, and the changing political climate.

Join Anne Oman and me on Tuesday, October 6, 10-11 A.M. CT US. We will be having a conversation about her remarkable life's journey and her novella, Mango Rains.