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 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.

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

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

A lieutenant leads his platoon of men through Vietnam but can't stop thinking about his girl back home. His distraction leads to dire consequences for both his soldiers and his love life.

A teenage son discreetly researches the Vietnam War, desperate for information about what his father may have experienced during his seventeen years in the Marine Corps.

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.

A desperate man in the Air Force reserve in the 1960s struggles with his belief in fighting for the US during the Vietnam War but fears that objecting may lead to his imprisonment.

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.