Beauty Rising

"My heart sank. I dumped my father's ashes in the heart of communist Vietnam - over a thousand miles from the death of his comrades - over a thousand miles from the smile of that girl. How could I have been so stupid?" Only the bumbling, overweight, thirtyish, stay-at-home Martin Kinney could have mistakenly flubbed his dying father's request with such gusto. This thousand mile mistake awakens the ghosts of long-held family secrets and puts Martin on a fateful course with an unlikely romantic interest - a young, beautiful, yet troubled Vietnamese woman named My Phuong. With its cross-cultural setting and unlikely romance, the 61,000 word novel Beauty Rising creates a powerful, unique voice in today's literature. In a swift- moving, dialogue-driven prose which is funny, honest, tragic and unpredictable, Beauty Rising explores the depths of culture, family, and love as the Vietnam War, a generation removed, continues to hang on the periphery of society, cursing families and causing destruction.

Mark W. Sasse teaches drama, history, and English when he isn’t writing. He lived in Vietnam for nearly ten years which provided the rich background of modern day Vietnam in his first novel ＂Beauty Rising＂ released in December 2012. He is passionate about live theater and has published a series of plays of different genres including ＂Spy Blue＂, ＂Take Two: Who Directs Your Life＂, ＂Life with Stewart＂ and ＂Fifteen 10-Minute Plays for the Stage.＂ He also produced and directed all of these as original stage productions. His dramatic production, ＂Drive All Night＂ premiered in November 2012 at the Penang Performing Arts Centre. He currently resides in Malaysia.