 This novel is filled with the mysterious beauty of Siam, the flamboyance of Paris, and the easy, rolling life of Rome before World War II. It’s a love story filled with adventure and sacrifice. Ewen tells an interesting, well-written, and totally captivating story here. You can’t help but enjoy it.
Reviewed by Rita Quinton
The Moon in the Mango Tree
by Pamela Binnings Ewen
B&H Fiction Publishing Group
ISBN-13:978-0-8054-4733, IUSBB-10:0-8054-4733-4, $15.99 390 Pages
It’s 1919 and a young bride questions herself as to whether or not she has made a mistake to come to Siam with her doctor husband. The Author, Pamela Binnings Ewen, tells a beautiful story in The Moon In The Mango Tree, a fictionalized version of her grandmother’s life. Starting in Philadelphia it takes us to the Jungle City of Siam which is Nan, to the more sophisticated city of Bangkok, then to Paris and Rome.
In 1916 Barbara Bond was a suffragette, marching passionately for women’s right to vote. She was studying to be an opera singer. Grand opera was her dream and she had an excellent teacher. Her future seemed to be very clear but then she met Harvey Perkins who was studying to be a doctor.
It was World War I and when Harvey graduated from medical school he immediately enlisted in the Army. He and Barbara had married in 1918. He returned from overseas in 1919 as a full Lieutenant. Babs, as her husband called her, and Harvey were very much in love, but as soon as they started to experience a normal married life she was offered a four- year contract with the Chicago Opera, while he was all enthused over the prospect of being a missionary doctor in Siam. He asks, “Couldn’t the singing wait a bit.” Babs puts her own dream on hold and goes with her husband.
Arriving in Siam they find they are not stationed in a city like Bangkok or Chiang Mai, but in the primitive Nan, one of the most desolate parts of the country. Her initial shock and disappointment are overcome by her fascination with the temples and people of Siam, but the wives of the two ministers at the mission do not make her feel welcome. Amalie Breeden is especially hostile as is her husband the Rev.Emery Breeden. Not even the wife of the old doctor Harvey has come to assist gives her any kind of welcome.
Intrigued by the beauty and mystery of Siam, Babs tries very hard to fit in, but it seems everything she does meets with disapproval by everyone except her husband and one of the teachers at the mission school. She forms a children’s choir and the Rev. Breeden is appalled and takes his anger out on her.
To Babs the years are dragging by although the birth of a daughter does alleviate some of her loneliness. Through it all her love for Harvey never wavers although she can’t help but wish they could go home to Philadelphia.
Word comes of an epidemic in a neighboring village. Harvey goes to treat the people. With him is a young Siamese, Ai Mah, who has been showing a great interest in becoming a doctor. Ai Mah had been gored by a buffalo and Harvey had saved his life. Also accompanying Harvey is the mysterious Englishman who had been roaming from village to village until he came to Nan in near death condition. Harvey has nursed him back to health and they are friends although no one knows anything of the man’s background.
While Harvey is away the Rainy Season starts. Babs has never experienced anything like it. The white worms come up from the ground and cover her porch to shelter from the rain, while snakes inhabit the attic. Worst of all for Babs is the giant lizard, a tokey, who comes into the house. She cannot understand why Harvey has left her and the baby to face the terror of the all-encompassing rain. Day after day she waits for his return but he does not come back until after the rainy season is over.
Harvey is pale and thin, grieving because his promising Siamese student has deserted the mission to return to his faith in Buddha. The Englishman tries to tell her what happened in the village where the epidemic raged, but she refuses to listen. All she can think of is that Harvey deserted her in her time of need. When she suffers a breakdown Harvey announces they are going home.
Back in Philadelphia they have another daughter and Babs feels life has returned as it should be. She begins to think about her singing career, but the Rockefeller Institute offers Harvey a teaching position at the Chulalongkorn University School of Medicine in Bangkok. Once again Babs puts her dream on hold and they go to Bangkok..
After a while the social whirl of Bangkok society, the joy and abandon of dancing the Charleston, even the beauty and excitement of parties at the Royal Palace, leave Babs searching for answers to her restlessness. The dream of being an opera singer comes back to her stronger than ever.
When she tells Harvey she wants to take the children and go to Paris, perhaps on to Rome, to study music once again, he does not try to stop her. In France she enrolls the girls in a boarding school and she goes on to Rome. A lucky encounter has given her an introduction to a famous music teacher. He tells her it’s too late for grand opera, but she can probably qualify for lighter roles.
In Rome Mussolini is coming into power and there are the young toughs, the black shirts, who follow him, but, like most Americans, Babs pays little attention to Italy’s political scene. She writes to Harvey but his letters are few and he says nothing about missing her. She comes to the conclusion that he does not need anything or anyone as long as he has his career
Harvey writes that he is to be decorated by the king of Siam with the Order of the White Elephant, the greatest honor bestowed to someone who is not Siamese, a farang, and he asks that she retrieve the children from boarding school and return to Bangkok for the ceremony. She feels that she gave up her singing once for him, and could not do it again. Not just yet. She writes to him trying to explain it all, telling him that after much work Ferrati now feels she can go into grand opera. “Just a little longer,” she pleads in her letter.
She goes back to Lausanne to celebrate Christmas with the children. Harvey surprises them by showing up. He tells Babs he did not come to force her to change her mind, but he wants her and the girls to come back to Bangkok with him.
When she asks him if he needs her to return he says, “No” and goes on to say, “I believe that marriage without choice is drudgery.” He leaves and she thinks his love for her is finished.
Back in Rome the lessons with Ferrati intensify as he prepares her for a singing debut. Then, a letter arrives from Harvey. His letter is full of love and he finally tells her it is time to choose. His contract is almost up and he can return to Philadelphia. If she won’t go back to America with him he will renew his contract. He repeats what he has said before that love without choice is drudgery.
The letter had been mailed weeks before and she only has a short time to give him an answer. A letter would take too long and she must cable. First she goes for her lesson and learns Ferrati is actually training her for a part in grand opera On her way home she runs into the mysterious Englishman from Nan, Joshua Smithers. He is a Jesuit priest and he explains his travel in Siam was a result of a crisis in faith. Now he has returned to the priesthood.
He insists on telling her about the plague in the village and of the bravery and dedication exhibited by Harvey. The story of what they went through is so gruesome that she finally realizes her agonies during the rainy season were nothing compared to what Harvey was bravely enduring.
Smithers tells her Harvey himself finally fell ill and was too weak to return to Nan during the rainy season. He says Harvey showed him the value of a life is measured by what we do, by how we live. Harvey saved the lives of many in that village, he says, and adds, “His life has meaning.”
The words of the Jesuit hit her hard and she realizes that she loves her husband completely. Once again she is faced with the awful choice of the music or her marriage. She sends the cable, suddenly feeling liberated. She made her choice but knows the music will always live within. Her cable tells Harvey, “Let’s go home.”
At the end of this book, Ewen tells of the years of love Dr. and Mrs. Perkins shared with their children and grandchildren, and grandma always had a beautiful singing voice.
This novel is filled with the mysterious beauty of Siam, the flamboyance of Paris, and the easy, rolling life of Rome before World War II. It’s a love story filled with adventure and sacrifice. Ewen tells an interesting, well-written, and totally captivating story here. You can’t help but enjoy it.
About the reviewer: Rita Quinton is a freelance writer, residing in Plantation, Florida. She has been a reporter, columnist, and the editor of both a weekly and a monthly newspaper. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in such diverse publications as Woman’s World, The Lamp-Post (CS Lewis Soc. Of CA), Buffalo Spree, Alive!, The Storyteller, Writer’s Journal (Minnesota Ink), Talers Tales, What’s Love, Chrysalis Reader, Mature Living, Real Fiction, Raven’s Tale, Dogwood Tales, Yesterday, Woman, Lines in the Sand, Millennium Science Fiction & Fantasy, My Legacy, Christian Home, Mature Years, Grit, Good Old Days, etc. She has written several novels, and continues to write short stories, flash fiction, a personal column under the title Almost Mature, essays and memoirs for a wide variety of magazines.
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