Includes bibliographical references (p. 475-480) and index.

1. A Burial in the Night -- 2. Shut Gate and High Walls -- 3. The Silk Merchant -- 4. French Veneer, Confucian Soul -- 5. Taxes, Floods, and Robbers -- 6. The Third Month in the Year of the Famine -- 7. The Head on the Roof -- 8. Into the Resistance Zone -- 9. Poison and Bribes -- 10. The Fall of a Border Garrison -- 11. Sifting Through the Rubble -- 12. The New Mecca -- 13. Just Cause -- 14. Short Peace, Long War -- 15. Flying into the Unknown -- 16. The Spoils of Victory -- 17. The Hours of Gold and Jade -- Epilogue: Across the Four Seas.

In The Sacred Willow, Mai Elliott tells the story of her family over four generations, from the 19th century to the present. She takes us back to the vanished world where her great-grandfather, Duong Lam, rose from poverty to become a mandarin at the imperial court. She tells of childhood hours spent in her grandmother's silk shop - and of hiding while French troops torched her village, watching blossoms torn by fire from the trees fluttering "like hundreds of butterflies" overhead. She reveals the agonizing choices that split Vietnamese families: while her father, loyal to his mandarin heritage, served the French colonial regime, her eldest sister joined the Communist guerillas and vanished for years into the jungle. Finally, Mai traces her family's journey through some of the most harrowing events of recent times - the fall of Saigon, the exodus of the boat people, and the re-education camps endured by those who were left behind.