Farish, Terry. Flower Shadows (Morrow, 1992).
Farish exhibits a fresh, original, and intensely appealing voice in this first adult novel-a female addition to the Vietnam genre that is as moving as it is wise. It is 1969, and Diana, a nutrition major in a small Texas women's college, is only 19 when she feels the call to go to Vietnam. The Red Cross needs "doughnut dollies"—wholesome young women to entertain the troops with trivia games and a little innocent flirtation - and shapely, blond, virginal Diana perfectly fits the bill...What she finds there, though, is hardly what she expected. After a few days of trying to interest death-stunned soldiers in baseball statistics and barbecues, Diana gradually ceases referring to "our boys" and their brave mission and draws closer to Pearly, her best friend and fellow entertainer, for comfort. Pearly proves unhelpful in this department: feeling responsible for the accidental death of her soldier boyfriend, she slides into a deep depression. Diana grows increasingly desperate as the violence escalates, her own tall, good-looking, Irish-American soldier boyfriend is called back into action, and their teenaged flirtation is forced to take on the weight of a life-or-death affair. (Kirkus Review)
Fern, Michaels. For All Their Lives (Ivy Books, 1992).
When Dr. Mac Carlin and Nurse Casey find themselves in the same Vietnam hospital, they discover that they've met once before, in a San Francisco cafe. Their reunion provides the chance for love in the midst of the brutal war.
Flowers, A. R. De Mojo Blues (Dutton, 1986).
Three black soldiers are dishonorably discharged from the Vietnam War due to a mutinous "fragging" incident. They return home resolved to take on the world, but ambition and poverty begin to dissolve their precious brotherhood forged in the trenches of Southeast Asia.
To counter this growing fragmentation, the hero-prophet of the group, Tucept HighJohn, inspired by a set of mystical bones passed on to him by a dying brother in Vietnam, undergoes "hoodoo" training in his isolated house on stilts in a wilderness park in Memphis. His new self-mastery enables him to relive his memories of Vietnam and to rally his ex-companions-in-arms with a vision of the triumph of black people everywhere. This rich first novel about the Vietnam inheritance of three black combat veterans, written in an original, rhythmic prose, marks the debut of a gifted young black novelist.
Ford, Daniel. Incident at Muc Wa (Doubleday, 1967).
This is the story that inspired the acclaimed Burt Lancaster movie, Go Tell the Spartans. It's 1964—early days in South Vietnam—and the U.S. Army Raiders garrison a town that the French abandoned ten years before. "Sad, bawdy, and compelling," wrote the Detroit Free Press—and prophetic, too, of how the larger war would end.
Fuller, Jack. Fragments (Morrow, 1984).
A vivid account of wartime experience and a friendship between two men. Morgan and Neumann volunteer for a special mission’s team. Neumann is charismatic, a leader, a legendary for his exploits. He "adopts" a village, rebuilds it, gains the villagers trust and falls in love with a village girl. But the reality of war is portrayed grimly when Neumann commits an atrocity. A disillusioned Morgan returns home and seeks the truth about what happened.
Galli, Richard. remfs (RGA Publishing, 2002).
remfs is a wildly unconventional, seriously comic story about a curious, unknown part of the Vietnam War. It’s a funny, surprising book about enchanted soldiers whose mission in Vietnam was unique, fascinating and hazardous—but so absurdly nice that the Army has been too shy to tell you about it. Armed with guns and an indispensable sense of humor, bewildered young Americans trudge the lonely back roads of an unpopular war, risking their lives to bring peanuts to Montagnards, and "miracle rice" to skeptical Vietnamese farmers... who sell the seed to Ho Chi Minh! They’re lost in a confusing, comical, half-mystical war zone where land mines and Jane Fonda are equally terrifying, water buffalo talk, fish dance in parking lots, and God interferes in barroom bets but rarely answers prayers.
Gibb, Camilla. The Beauty of Humanity Movement (Doubleday Canada, 2010).
Set in contemporary Vietnam, this is the story of a country undergoing momentous change and the story of how family is defined — not always by bloodlines but by the heart. Tu' is a young tour guide working in Hanoi for a company called New Dawn. While he leads tourists through the city, including American vets on "war tours," he starts to wonder what it is they are seeing of Vietnam —and what they miss entirely. Maggie, who is Vietnamese by birth but has lived most her life in the U.S., has returned to her country of origin in search of clues to her dissident father's disappearance during the war. Holding the story together is Old Man Hung, who has lived through decades of political upheaval and has still found a way to feed hope to his community of pondside dwellers.
This is a keenly observed and skillfully wrought novel about the reverberation of conflict through generations, the enduring legacy of art, and the redemption and renewal of long-lost love.
Giovannitti, Len. The Man Who Won the Medal of Honor (Random House, 1973).
In Vietnam, time is measured obsessively against the 365 days of killing that is the lot of the combat soldier. Ultimately, David Glass survives a series of shattering episodes to return home a hero- summoned for special honor by a grateful nation. With his innocence gone, but his values intact, he is given a last, outrageous opportunity to deal with his absurd world—an opportunity he is morally bound to grasp.
Grady, Patrick. Through the Picture Tube (Robert D. Reed, 2000).
Through the Picture Tube is the story about Frank Walsh’s odyssey of discovery 20 years after the Vietnam war. Walsh is a middle-aged draft dodger whose only experience with the war is through the TV. Restless and depressed over the loss of his wife and haunted by the ghosts of the war, he impulsively decides to go to Vietnam to discover what really happened to his black-American school buddy, Darrel Johnson, who was the only American killed in the Bien Lai Massacre. As Walsh digs deeper into the past, he must also come to grips with a number of moral dilemmas raised by the Vietnam war– the horrific massacre of villagers at Bien Lai and his own troubled conscience for having taken the easy way out.
Grey, Anthony. Saigon (Little, Brown, 1982).
A rip-roaring narrative, whose Vietnamese, French, and American protagonists conspire to be present at all defining moments in recent Vietnamese history, from French plantation riots to the fall of Saigon.
Greene, Graham. The Quiet American (Viking, 1955).
The uninvolved life of a jaded British-war correspondent in Saigon is upset by a young America government agent who falls in love with the correspondent’s Vietnamese mistress. The American is full of good intentions, but his naivete leads to trouble. This novel, written at a time when most Americans had difficulty knowing where Vietnam was, remarkably foreshadows the chaos that followed.
Groom, Winston. Better Times Than These (Summit Books, 1978).
The Vietnam War as experienced by Bravo Company is filled with atrocities, wretched living conditions, incompetent leadership, threats of mutiny, worries about war protest at home, and strong personal relationships between the key players. By following many characters and events, first during the trip across the Pacific on a navy transport, then during battles through jungles and mountains which result in death and destruction followed by exhaustion and numbness, the reader experiences an engrossing view of the daily life of a soldier in the Vietnam.
Guenther, Dan. China Wind (Ballantine Books, 1990).
It was the ultimate no-win set-up. They needed a soldier who knew the terrain and could cross it in the dark. They needed a man who would not balk at cutting throats. They needed a man who could take any kind of heat. And most of all, they needed a man who, if the mission failed, could take the beating—from the enemy and his own brass. In a war without rules, one young Marine lieutenant was about to go over the edge.
Halberstam, David. One Very Hot Day (Houghton Mifflin, 1967).
This is the story from the early days of the Vietnam War, when Americans were acting as advisors for Vietnamese troops. There is Captain Beaupre, an overweight and tired lifer, looking forward to retirement-just 18 months away. His Vietnamese counterpart is Captain Dang, who smiles, does nothing, and takes credit for what little Beaupre does. Their lieutenants are Anderson, a serious and ambitious West Pointer, and Thuong, proud, able and uncomfortable with the Americans. The action covers one day; one operation with unexpected results that will change the lives of all involved.
Haldeman, Joe W. The Forever War (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972).
Private William Mandella is a hero in spite of himself—a reluctant conscript drafted into an elite military unit, and propelled through space and time to fight in a distant 1000-year conflict. He never wanted to go to war, but the leaders on Earth have drawn a line in the interstellar sand—despite the fact that their fierce alien enemy is unknowable, unconquerable, and very far away. So Mandella will perform his duties without rancor and even rise up through the military's ranks . . . if he survives. But the true test of his mettle will come when he returns to Earth. Because of the time dilation caused by space travel the loyal soldier is aging months, while his home planet is aging centuries—and the difference will prove the saying: you never can go home.
Haldeman, Joe W. War Year (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972).
Deals with the experiences of a 19-year-old American soldier in Vietnam in 1968.
Hall, James V. To Win the Hearts (Dorrance, 1996).
In To Win The Hearts, James Hall reveals the politics of the Vietnam War on both the domestic and international fronts as he relates a gripping story of love, hope, life, and death in Vietnam from 1962 through 1975. Drawing upon his own Vietnam experiences as part of a government agency, To Win The Hearts presents the maturation and evolving ideologies of Dan Harker, an idealistic ex-Peace Corps worker who runs the gamut of emotion and convictions during his time in-country.
Hardesty, Steven. Ghost Soldiers (Walker, 1986).
A novel by a writer who was an artillery officer in Vietnam, about a group of soldiers, some alive and some dead, fighting together. The book focuses on various soldiers' fantasies, and how the fantasies become survival mechanisms.
Hasford, Gustav. The Phantom Blooper (Bantam, 1990).
Hasford re-creates the world of the Vietnam soldier, by turns tragic, surreal, and darkly comic, in which the enemy becomes a friend and a flesh and blood marine becomes a phantom who kills his own kind.
Hasford, Gustav. The Short-Timers (Harper & Row, 1979).
Gustav Hasford (1947-1993) was a United States Marine who served as a combat correspondent during the Vietnam War. His semi-autobiographical novel The Short-Timers was later made into the film Full Metal Jacket. Hasford wrote the screenplaythat Stanley Kubrick and Michael Herr produced.
Hastings, Michael. The Unknown Soldier: A Novel of Vietnam (Macmillian, 1986).
Ordered to destroy all records of the designated Vietnam Unknown soldier, Walt Meredith, a tracker of MIAs for the Pentagon, disobeys. Recent findings in the case to indicate foul play in the soldier’s battlefield death. At the risk of ruining his personal life, Walt perseveres in his quest to identify the Unknown. Madness, murder, love, honor and patriotism all play roles in this intriguing novel.
Hayslip, Le Ly. Child of War, Woman of Peace (Anchor, 1993).
The inspiring story of an immigrant's struggles to heal old wounds in the United States, this is the sequel to When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, Le Ly Hayslip's extraordinary, award-winning memoir of life in wartime Vietnam.
Hayslip, Le Ly. When Heaven and Earth Changed Places. (Plume; reprint edition, 1993).
It is said in war that heaven and earth change places not once, but many times. When Heaven and Earth Changed Places is the haunting memory of a girl on the verge of womanhood in a world turned upside down. The youngest of six children in a close-knit Buddhist family, Le Ly Hayslip was twelve years old when U.S. helicopters landed in Ky La, her little village in Central Vietnam. As the Government and Viet Cong troops fought in and around Ky La, both sides recruited children as spys and saboteurs. Le Ly was one of those children.
