The Time Keepers (REVIEW)

The Time Keepers, by Alyson Richman, is a historical novel about the effects the Vietnam War had on five dramatically different characters: a Jew, an Irish Catholic woman, a Vietnam veteran, an orphaned Vietnamese boy, and his aunt. Five individuals with diverse backgrounds and different life experiences had one thing in common, they shared the hurt and pain of rejection.

Small-town neighbors are known for their friendliness, but there were exceptions. They never fully accepted Tom, the owner of the clock and watch store Golden Hours, because he was Jewish. Members of Grace’s church shunned her because she married Tom, a Jew. The community avoided Jack, because they found it hard to look at his disfigured face which was the result of facial injuries sustained in Vietnam. Young toughs bullied a young boy named Bảo, because he was Vietnamese. And Ahn, Bảo’s aunt, had problems of acceptance because of her limited ability to speak English.

Despite the intolerance of the townsfolk, this is not a dark novel, for its story contains the redeeming light and warmth of the human spirit.

Bảo was a runaway Vietnamese boy from a Catholic facility called the Sisters of Saint Joseph which sponsored Vietnamese families seeking refuge from the war. Grace accidentally found him huddled on a street corner in a Long Island town and brought him home. Her husband Tom happened to meet Jack and offered him a way to rejoin the “living”. He did it in a most compassionate way, by offering him employment. Bảo’s aunt Ahn was the only family he had as he was the only family she had, consequently, she became his guardian angel.

I recommend you take the time to read this novel consisting of unlikely friendships, which in time become the glue that makes their lives inseparable. Thanks to Alyson Richman’s attention to detail, coupled with her soul of a poet, her novel keeps the reader engaged and tethered to the lives of each of its characters. The story is full of compassion and suspense and provides a perspective of what “the kindness of strangers” can do to rehabilitate forsaken, forgotten, and abandoned souls.