Burgess Hill resident gets father’s novel published after finding manuscript in drawer during Covid pandemic

Patricia Rykiel of Oakwood Road, rediscovered ‘Don't Break My Rice Bowl’ by her dad Robert H. Dodd during the first Covid lockdown of 2020.

IT consultant Patricia said the story is a ‘fictional memoir’ inspired by her father’s real life experience in Vietnam.

She said she knew about the manuscript when she was young, telling the Middy: “When I was 17 I didn't live with my dad, I visited him on holiday in America.”

She said her dad was English but also ‘very American’, having emigrated to the States with his mother when he was nine. She explained he was an agricultural expert sent to South Vietnam by the US government during the Vietnam war.

Patricia received a copy of the manuscript to take back to England in the ’80s and her father died in 1987 when he was just 50 years old.

Patricia said she read his manuscript in her twenties but ‘hadn’t paid full attention to it’, keeping it safely in a drawer until the Covid pandemic.

“It hit me completely differently as a daughter in my 50s,” she said. “In 2020 I’m reading it and realising that I’ve overlooked something of historical importance. It was moving.”

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The novel is about Eddie, an American agriculturalist who travels to Vietnam during the war as part of President Johnson’s ‘Hearts and Minds’ campaign. He and other characters try to support South Vietnam’s rice farming community against a backdrop of political and cultural challenges.

Patricia said reading the novel recently was emotional. She said: “It was me trying to understand my father more, who I didn’t grow up with – he would come and go.”

She said she felt more of a personal connection with him while reading and listening (and walking in lockdown) to the developing draft version of the story using Microsoft Word's Read Aloud mode.

“During that whole process it was almost like I was having a conversation with him,” she said. “Staying up late and getting up early, I felt quite connected with him through his words.”

Patricia said the manuscript was ‘95 per cent there’ in 2020, so to help prepare it for print she asked her father’s second wife, Beth Jackson, who lives in Arizona and has an editing background. It took them two years to finish it before they approached publishers.

Patricia, who lives with her husband and two adult children, said her daughter Justine is a trained illustrator and animator. So Justine designed the cover, and created 25 hand-painted illustrations inside.

Patricia said: “I think some people might think it's easy to bring a book to life but it's really quite difficult. Perhaps being a bit naive to the process was a benefit because I might have talked myself out of it had I understood how hard it is to get a book in a bookshop.”

Patricia added that in January she and her family went to Ho Chi Minh City to tour the sites in the book.

The novel is Published by Holey Jumper Press and is available in Waterstones and Blackwells and on Amazon. Patricia will be signing copies at The Crafters Market, at The Kiln, The Martlets, Burgess Hill, on March 2. The book is for sale at the Help Point shop too.