Foreword 

​

'It's like magic!' Dad marvelled, deleting and inserting text with enthusiasm. He was enthralled with the pleasures of his Osborne portable computer, having recently discovered the ease of editing his words. It was 1983. I was 17 and on a summer trip to the States, standing behind him as he typed, when his manuscript ‘Don't Break My Rice Bowl’ first came to my attention. That year a draft was completed and printed. However, unlike his usual full-steam-ahead style, he put his work aside, coming close but never finishing it.

 

​His sudden death in New York City a few years later meant the manuscript remained tucked away, left incomplete. Whenever I moved, my copy always came with me, but the manuscript sat in my drawer for 35 years. It took the quiet days of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic for me to appreciate the writing as a link to the past, too good to ignore. As I settled in my reading spot on one of those strangely calm lockdown days, time stood still as I entered the vivid adventures created by Robert ‘Bob’ Dodd.

​

His novel includes many autobiographical elements but is told through the eyes of an agricultural advisor named Eddie, sent on a US governmental mission in South Vietnam. The narrative's focus is the entwining lives of people connected with rice – and rice science and agricultural production were areas in which my dad was an expert. Scientists, farmers, villagers and rice paddies are in the foreground; the Vietnam War lurks in the background…

​

​​

This is an excerpt from the Foreword to Don't Break My Rice Bowl. The complete Foreword appears in the published book.