Fatal Crossroads

by Seymour Topping

In official U.S. military annals there is only the barest mention of the intrepid agents of the Office of Strategic Services who in 1945 lived in the jungles of Vietnam with Ho Chi Minh. Their mission was to train and arm a cadre of his Vietminh guerrillas for combat against the Japanese. This novel is based on that clandestine operation and on OSS interviews with Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam and South China.

The story unfolds at an historic moment in the last months of World War II when President Truman was deciding whether to pursue the Roosevelt aim of transforming Vietnam into a U.N. trusteeship leading to independence or yield to Charles De Gaulle's demands for restoration of French suzerainty. On a secret mission to realize President Roosevelt's vision, Travis Duncan, special agent of the OSS, undertakes a perilous journey, eluding Japanese forces and bandits, for a meeting with Ho Chi Minh in his remote headquarters. Duncan becomes witness in North and South Vietnam to the intrigue and brutality of the decisive power struggle between the Vietnamese nationalists and the French colonialists. Two women out of Duncan's past, a Vietnamese who had become a deputy to Ho Chi Minh, and a French Gaullist agent, emerge as key actors in his mission.

The reader will recognize the historic figures portrayed in this novel. The other characters are based on real individuals or are fictional. All serve to recall a turning point in history and a lost opportunity in dealing with Ho Ch-Minh that could have spared us the agony of the Vietnam War.

Hardcover

Published January 2, 2005

About the author

Seymour Topping is currently San Paolo Professor Emeritus of International Journalism at Columbia University. He is one of the most respected journalists in the world, having worked as a foreign correspondent in many different parts of the world for I.N.S., A.P. and the New York Times. He subsequently held several editorial positions within the New York Times Company while concurrently engaging in further writing of newspaper and magazine articles as well as both fiction and non-fiction books.