New Novel Explores Cambodia’s Mass Genocide

It’s Here! It’s Here!

For all my old-school friends and veterans, who need to feel the pulp of fiction between their fingers as they read their movies of the mind, The Asian Queen, is finally available in print!

Hannacroix Creek Books is pleased to announce the publication of The Asian Queen, a compelling and provocative historical novel by former Associated Press Writer Fred Yager, which explores the Cambodian genocide and how the Khmer Rouge were able to terrorize their country for over four years, causing the deaths of nearly two million Cambodians.

According to Yager, the genesis of The Asian Queen involved two incidents; one when Yager was a War Correspondent overing all in-country activity for the U.S. Navy, and the second when he was a Writer for the Associated Press.

During the Vietnam War, Yager was assigned to Detachment Charlie, a small group of war correspondents and combat photographers, who traveled throughout the country doing stories involving the US Navy, which was tasked with covering all the rivers and waterways. It was on an assignment in the Mekong Delta, that Yager, while doing an article on Sea Wolf Helicopter teams which provided air support for the Navy Seals, learned of the “ghost boat.” It seemed that one of the PBR’s (Patrol Boat River), that had been ambushed returned to the base camp on its own, empty of its crew and covered with blood. None of the crew were found.

?Years later, Yager was working in New York for the Associated Press when he interviewed Norwegian actress Liv Ullman, who had just returned from South East Asia, where she had served as a UN Refugee volunteer at a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand. She told Yager about the horror stories she was hearing from displaced Cambodians about how the Khmer Rouge rebels under the command of Pol Pot, were terrorizing and slaughtering any Cambodian they considered a possible threat to their plan to turn Cambodia into a completely agrarian society. This was before the Killing Fields was reported or made into a film.

Here’s a brief synopsis of The Asian Queen ?

It was nearing the end of 1977, a year that was remembered as a time of conflicting emotions. The nation was mourning the loss of a number of well-loved entertainers from Elvis Presley to Bing Crosby. It was also a time of hope and change as new President who had once been a peanut farmer held out the promise of new morning in America, putting the dark clouds of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War, behind us.

At the same time, on the other side of the world in the small country of Cambodia a horror story was unfolding, out of the media’s sight, and therefore unreported to the rest of the world. Khmer Rouge rebels, under the direction of a mad man known as Pol Pot, was committing a systematic process of genocide in an attempt to rid the nation of intellectuals and thinkers in order to breed a nation of farmers and followers. An estimated three million Cambodians were eventually killed during this reign of terror. It is against this backdrop, that our story is set …?

No one at the Refugee camp knew much about Monty Tipton, except that he was a loner, a drinker and had a weakness for young Thai women. They didn’t know that he was a Vietnam combat Veteran officially listed as missing in action, only that he lived on a boat and would, for a price, smuggle people out of Cambodia and drop them off at the refugee camp on the Thailand side of the Mekong River.

So, when UN refugee volunteer Esther Brafford needed someone to take her into Cambodia, Tipton seemed to be perfect for the job. After hearing horror stories about families were killed just because the father was thought to be an intellectual, Esther decided to do something about it. She had learned about Tipton from a recent arrival to the camp, named Heng, who warned her that the Khmer Rouge had spies in the camp to make sure evidence supporting the stories up was contained. He knew this because he had once been in the Khmer Rouge. He also had access to that kind of evidence but it was inside Cambodia.

But when Esther tried to hire Tipton to take her to into Cambodia, he refused saying it had become too dangerous. So Esther returned to the refugee camp, only to find that one of the doctors who also knew about the stories had been beheaded. Heng told Esther she had to leave the camp or suffer a similar fate, and that she should also warn Tipton because they may have followed her when she tried to hire him. When she does, Tipton is furious. He had gone to great lengths to establish a state of neutrality with both the Thai military and the Khmer Rouge.

An armed group of Khmer Rouge soldiers had actually followed Esther this time, forcing her, Tipton and Heng, to make a run for it aboard Tipton’s boat, the Asian Queen, with Heng being wounded in the process.

?While aboard the Asian Queen, Esther makes up a story that Heng had a map where Cambodians fleeing their country had buried jewels and money. She offered to split it with Tipton if he could just get them to this spot on a map. Only, when they get to the spot, instead of a treasure, they find a mass grave and hidden photos of torture, murder and experimentation under Pol Pot’s direction. Tipton hides his disappointment saying he knew there was never any treasure, but doesn’t think Esther’s determination to get the photos into the hands of UN officials is going to make a difference. Meanwhile, the Khmer Rouge chasing them are just as determined to prevent evidence of the killings from getting out, so when Esther and Tipton attempt to return to Thailand, they find the river has been blocked

Tipton realizes the only way Esther can get out is for him to provide a distraction so she can escape aboard a Japanese fishing trawler. For Tipton, this is a chance to confront the demons he’s been running from since he left the Vietnam War behind and fled aboard a navy boat. It’s also his way of redeeming himself, by sacrificing his life so the refugee volunteer he’s just fallen in love with can escape with her evidence that another holocaust is taking place and nothing is being done to stop it.