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She lived in the midst of war and poverty. And yet Linda West's memories are often nothing short of lyrical:

"I sit in the back of the temple by the door and listen to the wonderful, soothing chanting ...

"I fall into a half sleep, feeling light as I float along. Good visions appear. Celebrations, the moon, other children laughing and holding paper lanterns, the glimmer of dancing lights, water flowing in the river as paper boats with small candles float away."

Born Tran Thi Bach Yen Oanh, West, 48, has written a slender book about her early years in Vietnam — before she was whisked to America by her mother and the American serviceman she had married.

Though her mother and stepfather later divorced, West, who now lives in Tucson, dedicates the book to her stepfather, and to all the veterans who served in Vietnam.

Royalties from the book will be given to veterans groups from both Vietnam and from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as to help rebuild a grade school in Vietnam.

"I went to NamJam in October and gave a 10-minute speech," says West. "I thanked the veterans. Some of them came up afterward and said nobody had ever thanked them."

"I was there," says Sarge Rodriguez, whose group, Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter 106, has received West's first royalty check. "I was very moved. We hugged each other."

(NamJam is the annual fundraiser of Rodriguez's Chapter 106.)

An Army man for 22 years, Rodriguez, 69, was a combat engineer in Vietnam in 1969 and saw plenty of children just like West.

"We went through the roads and the rice paddies, setting up bridges. We'd give the kids our candy and C-rations," he says.

"This book is not a political message," says West, who wrote it after viewing the faces of other children in another war — the Iraqi children in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Those faces, she says, "brought a lot of memories back."

Born in a small village about 30 miles from Saigon, West went to live with her paternal grandmother at age 5, after her parents split up and her mother went to work in the bars of Saigon.

Her grandmother's house, across from a compound for South Vietnamese soldiers, sometimes got caught in the crossfire between the soldiers and the Viet Cong.

Then, West and her grandmother would scurry into a dugout beneath the little girl's bed.

Occasionally West's mother would come to visit, bringing her pretty American dresses. When a classmate taunted her that her dresses came from a mother who entertained American GIs, West ran, crying, home.

Her grandmother — whose memory still brings tears to West's eyes today — lovingly reassured her.

One day a helicopter dropped a chalky powder over a field where West was playing. Soon, she developed blisters on her arm that disappeared after a few days. Was it Agent Orange? West isn't sure, though she still carries slight scars today.

Her first face-to-face with American soldiers came when they set up a medical checkpoint across from her house, where West was examined, vaccinated and given a shiny, new toothbrush.

Later on, she watched and waved as American troops and trucks thundered past on their way to battle.

Sometime later, the Americans came back, depleted and dispirited. "When they came back, there was this feeling, almost like doom," says West.

When she was 10, West came to America with her mother and two brothers, thanks to her new American stepfather, Herbert Robert West.

"We lived on an Army base in Maryland," says West, who marveled at snow — and the riches to be found in America's supermarkets.

With limited English, she was put in first grade. "I was smaller than most of the first graders," says West, who advanced through the grades as her English improved.

It was at a sleepover at a new friend's home in Maryland when she first realized the toll of the war on America. "My friend remarked that her uncle had died there," says West. "Somehow, I felt responsible."

In 1976, her mother and stepfather divorced and her mother, though an American citizen by then, returned to Vietnam. She now lives in a condo in Ho Chi Minh City — the former Saigon.

In 1995, West went back to Vietnam for the first time — and to the grandmother who had raised her.

"We slept in one room again. It was wonderful," says West, who learned that her grandmother, and all her grandmother's relatives, had been forced to go to re-education camps. "It was a lot of hard work for her," says West.

Two years after her visit, her grandmother died. On Friday, West returns from her second trip to Vietnam, where she planned to see both her mother and her biological father.

Before her trip, she mused, "They tell me I won't recognize Ho Chi Minh City now."