Michael Miller is a smalltown kid, recruited to the foreign office by his college professor. He is posted to Saigon in the early seventies, at a time during the Paris Peace Accord Talks leading up to American withdrawal.
Inexperienced Miller spends his days translating innocuous documents which pass across his desk. Finding friendship with Corley Rogers, a fellow American whose job is to write upbeat stories about the region for press publication back home, they spend off- duty time playing tennis at the club, as hordes of ex-pats before and after. When Miller is seconded part-time to Agent Ignatius Donovan, he becomes immersed in the murky waters of dirty war tactics and trickery. Despite Miller’s dismay at these tactics, he finds himself continuing to strive for Donovan’s approval, all the while intensifying his own self-loathing.
Now, in the autumn of his life, Miller looks back and attempts to atone for, or at least to come to terms with his past shame.
David Park’s spare, descriptive prose brings 70s Saigon to life. The sights, sounds, heat and smells, and the enormous framework required for occupation (for whatever reason) within a foreign country, difficult to mobilise but even more troublesome to dismantle, spring from the pages in the first half of this book.
The character portraits are faultless; from ingenue Miller, the unscrupulous Donavan and the hapless Corley, to pregnant Tuyen and the endangered Vietnamese workers left behind.
With a lifetime of diplomatic service behind him after Saigon, and now retired, Miller finds an unexpected link to Donovan at the Mexican border and rushes to follow it up. At this point I worried that we have become so inured to horror, that the action felt slow and Miller’s misdemeanours small, but all regrets can be worry beads which don’t wear out.
There is no comfort in the state of Donovan who appears to be on his own atonement path of sorts and while the ending is uncertain, perhaps the things Miller fails to put to rest are compensated for by the freedom he helps bestow upon a stranger.

Spies in Canaan
By David Park

During the Fall of Saigon Mikey Miller is working as junior diplomat struggling to overcome his confusion and revulsion of the role of American forces in Vietnam. North Vietnamese forces and the Viet Cong are closing in on the city and foreign powers are desperately trying to evacuate their own citizens and the thousands upon thousands of Vietnamese and their families who have been promised safe exit in reward for their loyalty. But Mikey is a good an honorable man. He grows more and more disillusioned by his superiors as promises are broken and loyalty is forsaken for profit.
This is a very short read, with beautifully lyrical prose. The writing style is very tight, almost dreamlike as Mikey recalls events as he witnessed them, interspersed with all his imposter syndrome insecurities and moral dilemmas.
Forty years later, there are questions he wants answered and his own soul to be searched.

"if things are allowed to happen in the far flung dark corners of the world, then sooner or later they happen in the home place"

"I start to wonder what my existence would be if even once I stepped outside the confines of a life I had predestined by making it subservient to a particular code and an unbending and fixed set of contexts that... were sometimes at variance with who I really am"

How will he vindicate all his qualms and atone for crossing the threshold of his principals?

A slow first half, but then you will not want to put it down. A sublime ending; my heart sang for joy and I had a real book hug moment.

Thanks to #netgalley and #bloomsburypublishing for this ARC in exchange for an honest review
#spiesincanaan

Atmospheric, dark, and gripping: this is a fascinating story, well written, and complex.
Mickey is an excellent character and I liked how the young and old Mickey were developed.
The description of 70s Saigon were fascinating and lively.
The plot flows and it's very sad at moments.
The author is a talented storyteller and i liked the style of writing.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

What a treat Spies in Canaan by David Park is. Michael Miller is a retired "spook" mourning his late wife while he rattles around the house that is far too big for big for just him and day-dreaming about a romance with his home help, he's a lonely man. Still retaining the skills of his previous profession Miller realises that he's being followed and an unexpected parcel has him reminiscing about his days in Vietnam.

Miller is young and naive when he's posted to Saigon as a rookie CIA emplyee ,unaware that his time there will be brief. His war is spent in an office away from any fighting and quite uneventful until he's co-opted to "do favours" for a cynical and aggressive superior. As his eyes are becoming opened to the reality of the war it comes to Saigon and he finds himself having to make a decision that will haunt him for the rest of his life as America beats an inglorious retreat.

Park brings the febrile atmosphere of 70's Saigon to life, describing the sights,sounds and people that are Miller's world,then the changes as rumours of the Communist approach build up then become awful reality. Thinking that world back in the dim and distant past Miller has no idea that his past will be thrust upon him decades later.

This is a superbly-written book, I was reminded several times of James Lee Burke at his best when David Park paints his locations with words and elucidates the reflective and cerebral Miller's thoughts . This is a book to savour and enjoy the sheer quality of the writing. Miller is a moral man in a dirty world, a man who believes in duty but questions some of the things he's seen and heard in his service,a man who seeks redemption for a moment of hesitation in Saigon that affected many lives,not least his own.

This stellar novel is the wonderful Irish writer David Park's latest exquisite offering, beautifully written, it is a disturbing parable looking at the burden of guilt, repentence, atonement, hope and redemption. Michael 'Mikey' Miller is a midwest, small town, bookish, presbyterian prairie boy, whose many important points in his life have been reflected in books. Retired, he lives a peaceful if lonely life after the death of his wife, Julia. His haunted and guilt ridden past in the dying days of the Vietnam War in Saigon, which he has tried to bury deep inside, begins to re-emerge with the sighting of a strange car and the delivery of a package that contains a DVD and a brief note. After viewing the documentary on the DVD, he sets off on a journey, hoping to find answers to questions that have plagued him through time, seeking to atone for his sins, in the inhospitable desert wilderness of the Canaan Ranch, a landscape which seems far from the promised land.

A young Michael ends up working for the CIA in the absence of any longing or ambition for an alternative career, which is how he comes to be in Saigon as a naive, glorified clerk, his work including the translation of received intelligence reports. He finds a friend in aspiring writer, Corley Rodgers, who writes propaganda about the good the Americans are doing in the country. They stumble through their everyday lives in the final days of a war, lives not perceived through the printed pages and the long lens of history and its damning judgements. Horrifying events carried out by the Americans are written up by Corley, and Michael, in his efforts to win the respect of CIA analyst, Ignatius Donovan, finds his moral code brutally compromised, revelations and acts that leave both men shamed and irrevocably damaged in their perception and in the eyes of others. On his return to the US, Michael leaves the CIA and embarks on a successful career as a diplomat in the Foreign Service until he retires.

Twelve spies went to spy in Canaan, ten were bad, two were good, but who can see and identify which spy is which, given the historical turbulence and the distortions of memory? Michael encounters a much changed Donovan for whom he agrees to do a favour that may just lighten the trauma of the guilt he has carried through the years. This is a riveting read, when it comes to Park, you can rely on his use of lyrical prose and beautiful imagery. as he explores the nature of what it is to be human, the inevitable flaws, the efforts to be good, to do the right thing. Yet for virtually all of us, we will fall short of our perceived ideals and morality, at some point we too might have to enter the wilderness looking for redemption. An outstanding read that I recommend highly. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.