The peak of the hot season, 1942: The wars in Europe and Asia and the Japanese occupation have upset the uneasy balance of French Indochina. In the Vietnamese fishing village of Phan Thiet, Tuyet ekes out a living at a small storefront with her aunt Coi, her cousin Ha, and her two-year-old daughter, Anh. She can hardly remember her luxurious life in the city of Saigon, which she left just two years ago. The day Tuyet meets Japanese major Yamazaki Takeshi is inauspicious and stifling, with no relief from the sand-stirring wind. But to her surprise, she feels not fear or wariness, but a strange kinship. Tuyet is guarded, knowing how the townspeople might whisper, yet is drawn to Takeshi's warmth all the same. A wounded veteran with a good heart, Takeshi grows to resent the Empire for what it has taken—and the promises it has failed to keep. As the Viet Minh begin to battle the French and Takeshi risks his life for the Resistance, Tuyet and her family are drawn into the conflict, with devastating consequences.
Pham’s straightforward, unpretentious prose is used to devastating effect in the latter half of the novel. Its bluntness makes descriptions of visceral horror...even more searing ... There is a secondary love story told in Twilight Territory, quieter but just as powerful: the kinship between Vietnamese women. Tuyet and Takeshi’s star-crossed romance may fuel the novel’s whirlwind plot, but the love between Tuyet and her aunt and daughter is its core, and the ingenuity and resilience of other women always save Tuyet in her most dire moments.