Media Release
CONTACT: Anne Oman
[email protected]
202-340-3260
February 4 2020
Travel back in time to 1963, to a sleepy Southeast Asian backwater. Bienvenue á Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, a former French colony ruled by a famously mercurial Prince who dances between East and West and conducts diplomacy on the volley ball court. Though a war rages next door in Viet Nam, life in Cambodian capital seems peaceful, and no one has heard of Pol Pot or envisions the horrors to come with the Khmers Rouge.
Mango Rains, a new novella by Fernandina Beach resident Anne H. Oman opens just as the calm is about to turn into cataclysm. 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 Viet Nam, and the assassination of President Kennedy – precipitate a crisis that scatters the characters in the story to the far corners of the globe: Viet Nam, Indonesia, India, Africa and beyond. The events are seen through the eyes of Julia Galbraith, a newly arrived American Foreign Service Officer, whose journal chronicles the doings of the insular expatriate community, her own love affairs and heartbreaks, and the changing political climate.
Mango Rains is published by Galaxy Galloper Press, a publisher dedicated to reviving the novella.
“The novella is a neglected, stunning art form,” says Lauren Haynes, Editor-in-Chief at Galaxy Galloper. “In a market saturated with short stories and novels, where odd lengths are considered ‘unpublishable’, it is our mission to see a revitalization of this genre and give a voice to works in the range of 15,000 to 50,000 words.”
Some well-known novellas: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Daisy Miller by Henry James, Death in Venice by Thomas Mann.
Anne H. Oman began her career as a Foreign Service Officer for the now defunct U.S. Information Agency, charged with “winning the hearts and minds of the people.” Posted to Cambodia and Indonesia, she was expelled from both countries, for political, not personal, reasons.Since that time, she has worked principally as a journalist. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the Washington Star, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Washington Woman, Family Circle, National Geographic World, Sailing and other publications. Currently, she is Reporter at Large for the Fernandina Observer in Fernandina Beach. She has published four non-fiction books. Mango Rains is her first work of fiction.
The author will be greeting visitors and signing books at the Amelia Island Book Festival Author Expo, Saturday, February 15 from 10 to 5 at the Fernandina Beach Middle School, 315 Citrona Drive, Fernandina Beach. A Reception and Book Talk will be held Sunday, February 16 at Story & Song Bookstore and Bistro, 1430 Park Avenue, Fernandina Beach. Mango Rains is available at bookstores, and may be ordered through www.indiebound.org, www.amazon.com, or www.barnesandnoble.com.
For more information, including discussion questions for book groups, go to www.mangorains.net .