---
title: Vivi Tran's Vietnam War Novel The Porch Light I Leave On Began at Her Memoir's Book Signings
description: Continuing the story begun in Where the Leaves Fall, the author's new novel follows Tim, a veteran living with PTSD and the effects of Agent Orange, and Kate...
author: Darie Nani (Editor-in-Chief)
updated: 2026-09-01T16:13:01.802Z
canonical: https://richbooksmagazine.com/article/vivi-tran-s-vietnam-war-novel-the-porch-light-i-leave-on-began-at-her-memoir-s-book-signings
image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/vivi-porch-light-hero.webp
categories: Authors & Writers, Fiction
content_type: Spotlight
publication: Rich Books
about:
  - type: Person
    name: Vivi Tran
    description: Vivi Tran is a Vietnamese-born author who came to the United States in her mid-twenties. She began writing at sixteen, with early essays and short stories published in local papers and children's magazines. She is the author of the memoir The Footprints of Her Soul and the novels Where the Leaves Fall and The Porch Light I Leave On.
    jobTitle: Author
    sameAs:
      - https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0BLWFDFXG
      - https://www.youtube.com/@authorvivitran
---

Vivi Tran heard the same thing again and again at book signings for her memoir, The Footprints of Her Soul: readers were disappointed she had not written about the Vietnam War. The thought stayed with her until she worked out how to tell that story as fiction, first in the novel Where the Leaves Fall and now in its continuation, The Porch Light I Leave On.

"After publishing The Footprints of Her Soul, readers at one of my private book signings told me they were disappointed I hadn't written about the Vietnam War — that stayed with me until I found the right way to tell it, first through Where the Leaves Fall, and now through The Porch Light I Leave On," Tran says.

The novel centers on Tim, a Vietnam veteran living with PTSD, and Kate, a young Vietnamese refugee his family sponsors. Their lives meet across rural Kansas and suburban California, and what grows between them is shaped at every turn by the war both carried home in different ways. Tim's health is failing from an illness linked to Agent Orange exposure, and his symptoms sit between him and the future he wants. In one of the book's hardest moments he chooses to leave so that Kate can have a fuller life, asking her to find someone who could dance with her without trembling.

## A Vietnam War Novel Told from Both Sides

Kate arrives carrying the displacement of the refugee, down to the name she sets aside; in her letters she signs herself Khanh Tran. Tim carries the version of the war that came back to Kansas with him, the nightmares and the guilt that his family, who knew little of his condition when they agreed to sponsor a refugee, slowly learn to see. The porch light of the title runs through the book as its central image, the signal left burning for someone who may or may not come home, and Tran uses it to mark every stage of the relationship, from chapters where the light trembles to the one where it goes out.

Tran has said she wrote the novel partly so that younger readers would understand the Vietnam War as more than dates in a history book, and would see the sacrifices made by young servicemen and the endurance asked of the families who loved them. The story also draws on her own past experience of someone deeply affected by the horrors of war, which gives its emotional core a personal foundation. She does not write healing as quick or straightforward; the book follows how compassion takes shape amid real pain, and how love holds when illness, memory and unspoken suffering pull at it.

## An Author Who Began with a Diary at 16

> "I never set out to become an author — writing and poetry have always been my way of keeping a peaceful mind."
> — Vivi Tran

Tran was born in Vietnam and came to the United States in her mid-twenties. Her father was a writer, a poet and a journalist, and in her author's biography she describes him as a strict man she learned to communicate with in writing instead. Books kept her company through a childhood she describes as marked by poverty and war, and she began writing at sixteen, publishing essays and short stories in local papers and children's magazines. She names Pearl S. Buck as the writer who has shaped her thinking since she was a child.

Her memoir grew out of a diary she has kept since she was 16, and it was her grandson who inspired her to turn it into a book. The signings that set this novel in motion were organized by her family and by book clubs in her community: four of them so far, she says, with more than 200 attendees combined, all of it new to her.

The Porch Light I Leave On continues the story begun in Where the Leaves Fall, returning to Kate and to the circumstances of her sponsorship. Written for readers of all ages, it carries Tran's conviction that meaningful bonds can endure extraordinary hardship. An official book trailer, set among the Kansas wheat fields of 1975, is on [YouTube](https://youtube.com/shorts/LmE7atsYsP0).

## FAQ

**Q: Do I need to read Where the Leaves Fall before The Porch Light I Leave On?**
The Porch Light I Leave On continues Kate's story from Where the Leaves Fall and returns to the circumstances of her sponsorship by Tim's family. Reading the earlier novel first gives the fullest picture, though the new book introduces its central relationship in its own right.

**Q: What has Vivi Tran written before this novel?**
A memoir, The Footprints of Her Soul (2022), drawn from a diary she has kept since the age of 16, followed by the novel Where the Leaves Fall (2025), her first work of Vietnam War fiction. All three books are also available as audiobooks.

**Q: Is The Porch Light I Leave On based on a true story?**
It is fiction, grounded in the real history of Vietnam veterans returning with PTSD and illnesses linked to Agent Orange, and of the Vietnamese refugees sponsored by American families. Tran has said the story draws on her own experience of someone deeply affected by the war.

**About Vivi Tran**
Author

Vivi Tran is a Vietnamese-born author who came to the United States in her mid-twenties. She began writing at sixteen, with early essays and short stories published in local papers and children's magazines. She is the author of the memoir The Footprints of Her Soul and the novels Where the Leaves Fall and The Porch Light I Leave On.