Vietnam War Fiction

Nineteen-year-old Eddie Henderson is a private in the US Army. His parents are deceased, and he has no one in his life except his platoon brothers - Porter, Rocky, and Professor. His fellow soldiers are his family now. But none share a bond as close as he and his best friend, team leader Mitch Drexler. In the heat and jungles of Vietnam, each man does the best he can to survive. Battles are fought, friends lost, and promises made to the fallen. But when the enemy fatally wounds a platoon brother in a deadly attack, the dying soldier makes Eddie promise to fulfill a final vow.

A Yale graduate who volunteered to serve his country, Larry Gwin was only 23 years old when he arrived in Vietnam in 1965. After a brief stint in the Delta, Gwin was reassigned to the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in An Khe. There, in the hotly contested Central Highlands, he served almost nine months as executive officer for Alpha Company, 2/7, fighting against crack NVA troops in some of the war's most horrific battles.

This is the incredible true story of a brave military unit in Vietnam that risked everything to rescue an outnumbered troop under heavy fire-and the 39-year odyssey to recognize their bravery.

Big Wednesday, based on the cult 1978 film by the same name, follows three California beach buddies begin to realize there is more to life than waxing down their surfboards as they ditch their alcoholic and unruly ways to go fight in the Vietnam War. When they reunite 10 years later, they find that things in Malibu are much different after fighting a war.

As a journalist Paxton Andrews would experience Vietnam firsthand. We follow her from high school in Savannah to college in Berkeley and then to work in Saigon. For the soldiers she knew and met there, Vietnam would change their lives in ways they could never have imagined. For the men in her life, Vietnam would change their lives in ways they could not escape or deny.

Imagine that there are American MIAs who chose to remain missing after the Vietnam War. Imagine that there is a family in which four generations of strong, alluring women have shared a mysterious connection to an outlandish figure from Japanese folklore. Imagine just those things (don’t even try to imagine the love story) and you’ll have a foretaste of Tom Robbins’s eighth and perhaps most beautifully crafted novel--a work as timeless as myth yet as topical as the latest international threat.

After the last American troops leave Vietnam, siblings Anh, Thanh, and Minh begin a perilous journey to Hong Kong with the promise that their parents and younger siblings will soon follow. But when tragedy strikes, the three children are left orphaned, and sixteen-year-old Anh becomes the caretaker for her two younger brothers overnight. In the years that follow, Anh and her brothers resettle in the UK and confront their new identities as refugees, first in camps and resettlement centers and then, later, in a London plagued by social inequality and anti-immigrant sentiment.

Following their fallen brothers home, Andy Carter and Jim Anderson struggle to carve out a normal life post-combat. Dead-end jobs are the least of the insults they must endure. Instead of the hero’s welcome they’d expected, they’re greeted with contempt or apathy by those waiting back home. Betrayed by those they fought to protect and burdened with the guilt of surviving, the friends make the only choice that feels right—they reenlist. After all, who’s going to help protect the soldiers left behind?

Avril 1975, Saïgon est en plein chaos. À l'abri d'une villa, entre deux whiskies, un général de l'armée du Sud Vietnam et son capitaine dressent la liste de ceux qui pourront quitter le pays par les derniers avions. Mais ce que le général ignore, c'est que son capitaine est un agent double au service des communistes. Arrivé en Californie, tandis que le général et ses compatriotes exilés tentent de recréer un petit bout de Vietnam sous le soleil de L.A., notre homme observe et rend des comptes dans des lettres codées à son meilleur ami resté au pays.

Maine, 1969. After losing her parents in a car accident, aspiring artist Annalisa Mancuso lives with her grandmother and their large Italian family in the stifling factory town of Payton Mills. Inspired by her mother, whose own artistic dreams disappeared in a damaged marriage, Annalisa is dedicated only to painting. Closed off to love, and driven as much by her innate talent as she is the disillusionment of her past, Annalisa just wants to come into her own.

Unlike other branches of the armed services, the Navy draws its police force from the ranks as temporary duty - Shore Patrol. In this funny, bawdy, moving audiobook set during the height of the Vietnam War, two career sailors in transit in Norfolk, Virginia - Billy "Bad-Ass" Buddusky and Mule Mulhall - are assigned to escort 18-year-old Larry Meadows from Norfolk to the brig in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he is to serve an eight-year sentence for petty theft. It's good duty, until the two old salts realize the injustice of the sentence and are oddly affected by the naive innocence of their young prisoner.

Cracker is one of the U.S. Army's most valuable weapons: a German shepherd trained to sniff out bombs, traps, and the enemy. Rick is headed to Vietnam to prove to everyone who didn't think he was cut out for war that they were wrong. When Cracker is paired with Rick, she isn't so sure about this new owner. He's going to have to prove himself to her before she's going to prove herself to him. They need to be friends before they can be a team, and they have to be a team if they want to get home alive.

Two young women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge. Build Your House Around My Body takes us from colonial mansions to ramshackle zoos, from sweaty nightclubs to the jostling seats of motorbikes, from ex-pat flats to sizzling back-alley street carts. Spanning more than fifty years of Vietnamese history and barreling toward an unforgettable conclusion, this is a time-traveling, heart-pounding, border-crossing fever dream of a novel that will haunt you long after the last minute.

Set against the background of Saigon's desperate last days, this concluding volume to Carroll's extraordinary naval aviation trilogy follows the adventures of helicopter pilot Lt. Tim Boyle and his best friend, Lt. Mike Santy, as they struggle to pull off the final American withdrawal from Vietnam. Boyle and Santy find themselves in the midst of chaos and danger as they desperately attempt to evacuate a stranded team of Navy SEALs before the final collapse.

The year is 1969. Private Andy Carter serves in Quang Ngai Province with his brothers in arms. While any one of them would die for each other, a vocal draftee in their squad constantly stirs up trouble. Ramsey, a former anti-war protestor and enemy sympathizer, believes they’re on the wrong side of the war. His stance angers his fellow soldiers and leaves them wary of him. When a routine recon mission uncovers an enemy tunnel, Carter suspects there’s more than meets the eye. This mission will leave Carter questioning the value of a soldier’s life and the madness of war.

The Vietnam War could have been called a comedy of errors if the consequences weren’t so deadly and tragic. In 1951, while war was raging in Korea, the United States began signing defense pacts with nations in the Pacific, intending to create alliances that would contain the spread of Communism. As the Korean War was winding down, America joined the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, pledging to defend several nations in the region from Communist aggression. One of those nations was South Vietnam.

It didn't seem possible. Four college students shot dead May 4, 1970, by Ohio National Guardsmen during a protest against the Vietnam War. The shootings at Kent State University would shock the nation and spark a mass student strike across the country, the only one in U.S. history.

During the latter days of the Vietnam War, deep in-country, a young idealistic Marine named Donny Fenn was cut down by a sniper's bullet as he set out on patrol with Swagger, who himself received a grievous wound. Years later Swagger married Donny's widow, Julie, and together they raise their daughter, Nikki, on a ranch in the isolated Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho. Although he struggles with the painful legacy of Vietnam, Swagger's greatest wish - to leave his violent past behind and live quietly with his family - seems to have come true...until a mortal enemy found him once again.

The peak of the hot season, 1942: The wars in Europe and Asia and the Japanese occupation have upset the uneasy balance of French Indochina. In the Vietnamese fishing village of Phan Thiet, Tuyet ekes out a living at a small storefront with her aunt Coi, her cousin Ha, and her two-year-old daughter, Anh. She can hardly remember her luxurious life in the city of Saigon, which she left just two years ago.

A dedicated U. S. Army assault helicopter pilot in Vietnam just wants to do his job and return home to his wife and family. But to do so, he has to survive harrowing combat missions, bad weather, mechanical problems, human error, and a commander who is more interested in personal glory and promotion than his men’s well-being. Along the way, he participated in the last major American combat operation of the war—Lam Son 719, a major incursion into Laos, which lasted sixty days and was the costliest period of the war for helicopter pilots and crew members.