"This anthology, named The perfume river after one of Vietnam's most poetic waterways, draws together writing 'from Vietnam' in every sense. The writers live in vietnam and a number of other countries. Some are of Vietnamese background, others are not. For all, Vietnam has defined itself as a voice of inspiration, of homeland, memory and discovery."-- Book jacket.

A powerful novel of a family haunted by the aftershocks of the Vietnam War—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of a A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. “You share a war in one way. You pass it on in another.” Passionate student activism brought Robert Quinlan together with his future wife during the tumultuous years of the Vietnam War. But since then, the long-married Florida university professors have grown apart. Their crumbling relationship is mirrored by Robert’s estrangement from his brother . . . alienated by the same controversial war. Now, with their father—a World War II veteran—lying close to death, the rift in the family is sorely tested when Robert’s brother refuses to put the past aside and return to say goodbye. And when Robert mistakes a homeless stranger for a fellow Vietnam veteran, his unstable presence in their lives will further stir the emotional scars that shattered the Quinlan men . . . and take its toll on those they love most. “Butler’s Faulknerian shuttling back and forth across the decades has less to do with literary pyrotechnics than with cutting to the chase. Perfume River hits its marks with a high-stakes intensity . . . Butler’s prose is fluid, and his handling of his many time-shifts as lucid as it is urgent. His descriptive gifts don’t extend just to his characters’ traits or their Florida and New Orleans settings, but to the history he’s addressing.” —Michael Upchurch, New York Times Book Review “Butler moves easily among his characters to create a composite portrait of a family that has been wrecked by choices made during the Vietnam War.” —Beth Nguyen, San Francisco Chronicle “The story builds its force with great care . . . Its power is that we want to keep reading. The entire journey is masterfully rendered, Butler lighting a path back into the cave, completely unafraid.” —Benjamin Busch, Washington Post “Butler greatly enlarges our sense of what the Vietnam War cost to a generation . . . Perfume River tells a human story that sums up an entire era of American life.” —Miami Herald “Butler’s assured, elegant novel . . . speaks eloquently of the way the past bleeds into the present, history reverberates through individual lives, and mortality challenges our perceptions of ourselves and others.” —Publishers Weekly “A heartbreaking story of fathers and sons and their expectations and disappointments . . . Perfume River is a powerful work that asks profound questions about betrayal and loyalty.” —BookPage

From one of America's most important writers, Perfume River is an exquisite novel that examines family ties and the legacy of the Vietnam War through the portrait of a single North Florida family.Robert Quinlan is a seventy-year-old historian, teaching at Florida State University, where his wife Darla is also tenured. Their marriage, forged in the fervor of anti-Vietnam-war protests, now bears the fractures of time, both personal and historical, with the couple trapped in an existence of morning coffee and solitary jogging and separate offices. For Robert and Darla, the cracks remain under the surface, whereas the divisions in Robert's own family are more apparent: he has almost no relationship with his brother Jimmy, who became estranged from the family as the Vietnam War intensified. Robert and Jimmy's father, a veteran of WWII, is coming to the end of his life, and aftershocks of war ripple across their lives once again, when Jimmy refuses to appear at his father's bedside. And an unstable homeless man whom Robert at first takes to be a fellow Vietnam veteran turns out to have a deep impact not just on Robert, but on his entire family.

Post World War II America and teenage boys dreamed of adventure growing up in the 1950s, listened to Elvis Presley and read Jack Kerouac, yet it wasn't cruising Route 66 in a Corvette that united them, but Highway 1, known as the Street Without Joy, on the way to Hue city during the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam. It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, Civil Rights and the pill, young girls in long boots and short skirts, but not for those in the jungle and rice paddies of Southeast Asia. Full of innocence and dreams, adolescent passion and coming of age horror, RIVER OF PERFUMES captures the contradictions of the times and what the brutality of war does to young men in battle, and a country that stayed home and abandoned them.

About Perfume River A lot went into this collection of poems, particularly as it took so long to pull the collection together. I'm one of those unfortunates who looked up my life expectancy and assumed I had years to get it together in the poetry department. 78 years? Please, I'm not even 50. I lived my life chasing bylines for my articles, and then agents for my novel manuscripts, and my poems...well, my poems. They sat getting written and accumulating time. Until one day I learned that those life expectancy lists were missing a couple of words. The set of numbers should begin with "Anywhere from...: " to ..".Right here." Stage 4 renal cell carcinoma. Average five year life expectancy after diagnosis: eight percent. Hope is a carousel, spinning into the future.

A struggling young artist. A bus stop. A boy. A story about anxiety and hope. Did Sam deserve to be happy or not? Wasn't it that simple? All her life, all the men she'd wanted to love, all the chances she'd taken, left her at night with a stereo and a skylight in the ceiling, where all she could see were the icy stars. Sam drew everyday people doing everyday things. Then she met Rexel. Their unlikely friendship is the backdrop for a story about believing in the future and reconciling the past, as Sam navigates her way through the Minnesota seasons in search of happiness. Perfume River takes you on an emotional journey, introducing you to a cast of compelling characters, each one bringing something to the table that helps Sam figure out how to move forward and embrace what's in her heart.

America's entrance into the wars in Vietnam came as a result of several factors. Among them was the necessity of bolstering French influence in the area in the face of mounting communist expansion. This expansion was intensified by the outbreak of the Korean War, making it necessary for the United States to revamp its Southeast Asian policy. During the French era, control of Vietnam's rivers, streams and canals became necessary. This led various factions to develop specialized military units heavily dependent on new types of river craft that could traverse the myriad waterways in Vietnam. The focal point of this study is a new assessment of the conduct of river warfare. Drawing on little-known French, Vietnamese and American sources and materials, it sheds light on an important aspect of the Vietnam War. Chapters also detail numerous aspects of river warfare not generally covered in other books on the subject.