A Vietnamese-Australian writer at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop receives a visit from his estranged father. With his final story due in a few days, he looks to his father’s life for inspiration.

To hear his friends and readers tell it, an American war correspondent based in Saigon is losing touch with reality. But to him, the opposite is true. Through studies of the Vietnamese people and fantastical letters to his children, he alternately tries to confront and embrace the world as it truly is.

A veteran tells his acquaintance about his darkest memories as a solider the Vietnam War.

A Vietnamese near-centenarian living in New Orleans reminisces on wars he experienced, ideas he held, and countries he saw during the 20th century with the help of the ghost of an old friend: Ho Chi Minh.

Speaking of his past experiences, a Vietnam War veteran describes the darker, unspoken details of life as a soldier that people often overlook.

In Vietnam War-era America, a young boy fills his days playing a “game” in which he reenacts his father’s battlefield death in Vietnam. But fun and games soon put his loved ones in real danger.

A group of Marines recall their horrifying memories of fighting on the Pacific front of World War II, while a journalist attempts to glorify their experiences for his readers.

After killing a lost American soldier, a Vietnamese man discovers similarities between the two of them and struggles to come to terms with his hasty decision.

An American veteran who watched his friend drown in a field of excrement in Vietnam drives in circles around the lake in his hometown ruminating on how he might have saved his friend, won a Silver Star for valor, and made his father proud.

A teenage Marine recruit befriends another recruit who dreams of becoming a a New York City artist. Together, they fight in the Vietnam War: he develops epilepsy, and his friend dies.