Madame Nhu is one of the more fascinating characters of the Vietnam War. She was the most visible figure of the Diem regime, far more colorful than the shrouds of secrecy around her husband Ngo Dinh Nhu, or the strident moralizing of President Diem himself. Nhu was always ready to defend her family and her government, the two being one and the same. Madame Nhu was universally despised by American government officials for reasons both good and bad. She was undoubtedly a proud and difficult person who's abrasiveness worked against her cause. Her comment on the Buddhist monks' self-immolation, that if they wished to throw a barbeque, she would bring the gas and a match, was an entirely self-inflicted wound, and one infamous enough to permanently stain her reputation. But at the same time, the sexist and racist world that she lived in couldn't accept a Vietnamese woman who sought to wield power.

Demery was fascinated by Madame Nhu, who had essentially disappeared from history following the coup that killed her husband and brother-in-law. A chance interview on a Vietnamese blog mentioned that Madame Nhu was still alive, living in an 11th floor apartment in Paris with a view of the Eiffel tower. There are few enough apartment buildings that meet that description that Demery was able to confirm Nhu's address and give the old woman her card via old fashioned leg work. What followed was five years of frustratingly evasive phone calls and an odd sort of friendship, as Demery became Nhu's biographer, and the means of her last statement to the world.

Madame Nhu was born into an aristocratic family in colonial Vietnam. Her father was the foremost Vietnamese lawyer under the colonial government, her mother a royal princess. However, she was an unwanted female middle child, and no one expected much of her marriage to an older Catholic man with an unimpressive library degree. That man, Ngo Dinh Nhu, was often absent from their house in the fraught years of the Japanese occupation and the First Indochinese War between the Viet Minh and the French, organizing a covert anti-Communist party that would put his brother Diem in charge of government.

Diem was handed a bad set of cards from the start. The French, bitter after their defeat, worked covertly against him. Ho Chi Minh and the Communists were genuinely more popular with the people, and thousands of dedicated cadres had stayed behind in the south. Gangsters and staunchly independent sects were lumps of opposition. A million refugees from North Vietnam had to be integrated into society. American aid was a double edge sword, enabling infrastructure and security projects, but also casting the new government as colonial puppets. In this environment, it's not surprising that Diem turned to his religion and his family for support. Not surprising, but a fatal flaw.

While Nhu had a backbone, she was profoundly disconnected from the people. She was an internal voice for a hardline stance against opponents of the government, which worked in the battle against gangsters and coup plotters, but also made her many enemies. As an elected official, Madame Nhu pushed for moral reform laws which were broadly unpopular. In perhaps a microcosm of her views on politics and family, she initiated a national ban on divorce to prevent an embarrassing breach of decorum from a sister-in-law seeking to leave an unhappy marriage.

As the Buddhist crisis escalated in 1963, Madame Nhu made an American tour to shore up support for her government. This probably saved her life, since she was in Los Angeles recovering from minor surgery when the coup occurred, and her husband and Diem were murdered by an American-backed conspiracy. She and the children fled to Europe, living mundane existences in Paris and Rome as history passed them by.

Demery paints a fascinating picture of Madame Nhu's life, including ordinary days at the top of the South Vietnamese government, and the messianic purpose which drove her.