Vietnamese American writer Andrew Lam remembers his father, Thi Quang Lam

Thi Quang Lam had already lived a lifetime when he arrived in the United States in 1975 as a refugee. He was only 45 and had spent a quarter century in the South Vietnamese army as a senior military officer fighting the Communist North. In exile in California, Thi Quang Lam achieved extraordinary things but never quite moved on from his bitterness at losing his country. Thi Quang Lam died of COVID-19 on Jan. 19. His son, Vietnamese American writer Andrew Lam, talks to Carol Hills about his father’s remarkable life and how their lives intersected but also diverged in significant ways.