Ambitious, emotionally resonant stories about the lives of women and girls in Vietnam over the past thousand years. In The Swallows Uncaged, Elizabeth McLean paints a sweeping yet intimate panorama of Vietnam in the style of a Vietnamese eight-panel screen: eight narratives that each capture a moment in time and yet speak to one another. Interweaving historical and fictional characters over ten centuries, the stories portray the passions and turmoils of successive generations of the Nguyen clan’s wives and daughters, and of their men. When the men go away, to war or to advance their fortune, the women stay behind (not always idly or chastely). They dutifully pass down their ancestors’ traditions to their daughters and granddaughters, but also recast the iron rules to gratify their ambitions and desires. At their humble posts by the hearth, they defy authority, scheme to improve their lot, and love zestfully and wickedly. Meticulously researched and beautifully crafted, these stories form a triumphant debut from an author with a superb gift for storytelling.

Elizabeth McLean immigrated to Canada from Warsaw, Poland, in the 1960s. She worked for several years as a CBC radio producer, a researcher for TIME Canada, and a government policy writer. In 2005, she moved to Hanoi, Vietnam, where she spent six years immersed in and researching Vietnamese culture. A debut author at age 73, Elizabeth now lives in Vancouver.

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“The Swallows Uncaged presents history’s women as agents within the constraints of their own time – birds who occasionally take flight.”

"Although McLean was acutely aware of the perils of writing about another culture, the themes she addresses — themes of entrapment by society, tradition, gender, expectation and history — are universal."