October 2025 Book, Fourth Uncle in the Mountain

Talk About Books meets every third Wednesday of the month at the Guilford Free Library at 6:30. 

If this book interests you, you can request a copy from the library. 

Fourth Uncle in the Mountain by Marjorie Pivar is an odyssey of a single-father folk hero and his foundling son in a land ravaged by the atrocities of war. It is a classic story complete with humor, tragedy, and insight, from a country where ghosts and magic are real.


Set during the French and American wars in South Vietnam, Fourth Uncle in the Mountain is the true story of an orphan, Quang Van Nguyen, adopted by a sixty-four-year-old monk, Thau Van Nguyen

Thau carries great responsibility for his people as a barefoot doctor. Wanted by the French regime, he must occasionally must flee in to the jungle, where he is perfectly at home living among the animals. As wise and resourceful as Thau is, he meets his match in his mischievous son. Quang is more interested in learning Cambodian sorcery and martial arts than in developing his skills and wisdom according to his father's plan.

Nevertheless, Thau manages against all odds to raise his son to follow in his footsteps and in doing so saves him, as well as a part of Vietnam's esoteric knowledge, from the Vietnam holocaust.

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