Vietnam War Fiction

Spreading democracy takes more than cutting-edge military hardware. Winning the hearts and minds of a troubled nation is a special mission we give to bewildered young soldiers who can't speak the native language, don't know the customs, can't tell friends from enemies, and, in this wonderfully outrageous Iraq-era novel about Vietnam, wonder why they have to risk their lives spraying peanut plants, inoculating pigs, and hauling miracle rice seed for Ho Chi Minh.

Buddha's Child will flood the shadowy corners of South Vietnam's Byzantine political world with the bright light of truth. Ky will describe the Americans and their activities from the perspective of the Vietnamese patriot.

Condemned by US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara as "the absolute bottom of the barrel," Ky was not expected to survive a week in the office into which he was thrust. Instead, he lasted three years, until he wrote himself out of office by penning the country's first constitution.

A small boy speaking an unknown language is abandoned by his father at an international airport, with only the clothes on his back and a handful of money jammed in the pocket of his coat. In order to understand this heartbreaking and indefensible decision, the story must return to the moment, decades earlier, when Vollie Frade, almost on a whim, enlists in the US Marine Corps to fight in Vietnam. Breaking definitively from his rural Iowan parents, Vollie puts in motion an unimaginable chain of events that sees him go to work for insidious people with intentions he cannot yet grasp.

Billy Flynn always wanted to fly. An attractive young man, a patriot, he is also an artist with pencil and paint and has an abiding affinity for nature. It's 1970 and he cannot resist the call to serve in Vietnam. A year later he is the only survivor when his helicopter is shot down. A Catalog of Birds is the story of a family and a community confronted with a loss of innocence and wounds that may never heal. The legacy of war and its destruction of nature is seared onto the memories of a small American town.

When the Secretary of Defense is assassinated, Michael Patrick Santini, a former Senator and Vietnam POW, is pulled from his Wall Street firm back to Washington to lead the Pentagon. Once there, he discovers that the United States is under attack by a silent, sinister force. Someone, somewhere is determined to destroy America as a global power - and Santini must uncover and expose this force before more acts of deceit and destruction draw the US into a war where millions will die. Rejecting a direct order from the President of the United States, Santini races across the globe....

Tiger Woman depicts a brief period of unconventional warfare that tests the boundaries of humanity in a haunting tale of unremitting evil no ordinary soldier ever trains to face. Captain Christen, a dedicated intelligence officer with the 25th Infantry Division, directs an all-out hunt for a roguish female who leads a small guerrilla force with chilling efficiency as she employs depraved acts of psychological warfare to instill terror in those she opposes.

Zazoo, almost 14, is Vietnamese by birth but feels entirely French. She lives with her adoptive grandfather, who brought her form Vietnam to his village in France when she was just two years old. Life with Grand-Pierre has always been filled with poetry and shared adventure, following the predictable rhythms of the season. Then one misty October morning, a boy on a bicycle rides into Ago's small French village and asks a question from which many stories begin to unfold.

Decades ago in Brooklyn, three girls demonstrated against the Vietnam War, and each followed a distinct path into adulthood. Helen became a violent revolutionary. Val wrote a controversial book, Bright Morning of Pain, which was essentially a novelization of Helen’s all-too-short but vibrant life. And Olive became an editor and writer, now comfortably settled with her husband, Griff, in modern-day New Haven. In Conscience, Alice Mattison paints the nuanced relationships between the palpable personalities of Olive, Griff, and Jean with her signature wit and precision.

The cover of darkness was pulled back by the NODS scopes in their hands. The enemy had no idea what was about to befall them. With the rush of wings of dragons, the sounds of M-14s, M-870 shotguns, M-16s, and grenades spoke the finality of death. This gave the human pack mules a taste of what would continue to reign upon them in the House of the Dragon. North and South Vietnam were at war. Indeed, all of Southeast Asia was at war. Due to national commitments, the US military was drawn into the fray.

There are dozens of unforgettable characters, and scores of authentic scenes in Brandywine's War. From behind the headlines and the front-line dispatches has come this Rabelaisian novel. Chief Warrant Officer Vaughan completed Brandywine's War while serving his second of three tours of duty in Vietnam.

Robert Peterson arrived in Vietnam in the fall of 1966, a young American ready to serve his country and seize his destiny. What happened in that jungle war would change his life forever. Peterson vividly relives the tense patrols in the Viet Cong-infested Central Highlands, the fierce firefights along the Cambodian border, the ambushes and enemy charges.

Gerald "Jerry" Keyser and I became friends in 1966, when we were both in USAF Pilot Training. In 1970 I got out of the Air Force and Jerry stayed in. We remained friends and I followed along in awe as he went on to have the most amazing flying career I have ever seen. He flew 100 different types of airplanes, helicopters, and gliders during his 20 years in the Air Force, including a stint with NASA, and his 17 years as a test pilot for Hughes-McDonell Douglas-Boeing Helicopter Company in Arizona.

In January 1968, the 26th Marine Regiment was ordered to a place in the far northwest corner of South Vietnam called Khe Sanh. John Corbett, an untested replacement in a clean, green uniform, and his fellow leathernecks were responsible for building and defending the combat base, and holding positions on the strategic hills overlooking the Ho Chi Minh Trail as it crossed into Laos and South Vietnam from nearby North Vietnam. Only days after Corbett arrived at Khe Sanh, some 20,000 North Vietnamese soldiers surrounded the base, outnumbering the American Marines seven to one.

The controversial Battle at Xa Long Tan was not only a critical episode in Australia's Vietnam involvement; it was also a textbook nightmare in the history of jungle warfare. Reconstructing this dramatic action from secret documents and the vivid recollections of many diggers who fought at Long Tan, Terry Burstall challenges the official army version.

Joe runs into a hidden punji trap, and the poisoned stakes deal him a hammer blow. A dustoff back to Da Nang and a long stay in the hospital puts him out of action, and the only consolation is the pretty nurse who attends to his wounds. When he is released, his platoon is in the field, and they give him a temporary posting to another platoon about to fly out to the Laotian border to check out a rumored convoy of vital supplies, weapons, and ammo for the VC.

Private Joe Walker and Third Platoon run into an ambush, and this is no ordinary ambush. Waiting for them is a North Vietnamese armored unit. This is a place where no armor should exist for a long, long way. And Third Platoon has no way to engage enemy tanks. Yet they have a radio, and all it needs is a quick call to Da Nang to call in a squadron of fighter bombers. Until the radio is damaged, and the tanks are coming on fast. 

It is 1965, and America is putting more boots on the ground to fight the communists who have sent their powerful People’s Army of Vietnam, the PAVN, south. Their aim is to defeat the South Vietnamese Army, the ARVN, and impose the iron fist of communist rule on the democratic South. Walker knows nothing of politics or military strategy and tactics. A single obsession rules his life: to become a major league baseball pitcher.

Rookie Joe Walker, 3rd Brigade, 7th Air Cavalry, was finding life in Vietnam tough. The war is building into a major conflict, yet despite his efforts, he feels like a square peg in a round hole. He can’t shoot straight, missed the bayonet course, and nothing ever goes right. He can throw a mean grenade, but the army made him a rifleman, and they’re determined to make sure he can shoot straight. Or else.

Authors Robert Toto and Richard Geschke have expanded their horizons of their original book, In Our Duffel Bags, Surviving the Vietnam Era, with a poetic interpretation of life in the army. Tracking their adventures in Germany, Panama and Vietnam, the authors wax the poetic version of what they found in their duffel bags looking deeper into the fast changing times of the Vietnam era. With Shadows of Combat the listener will sense the history of what took place in this crucial time in American history.

An inspiring and astounding look at the extraordinary courage and contribution of Australian nurses and medics during the Vietnam War. From the best-selling author of Bush Nurses and Nurses of the Outback comes this collection of compelling and moving stories of our heroic nurses in the Vietnam War. Being a nurse always requires a cool head, a steady hand and an open heart. But if you're working in a war zone, the challenges are much harder.