Book summary

In Mason's acclaimed novel, Samantha Hughes is staying with her uncle Emmett the summer after high school, while she considers her future. Her mother has remarried and moved to Lexington, Kentucky with her husband and new baby--in the meantime, Emmett develops headaches, rashes, stomach trouble, and Sam fears Agent Orange poisoning. In her attempts to come to terms with this, and with her father's death in Vietnam, she encounters Emmett's Vietnam War buddies, her mother's Beatles records, and her father's war diary. Eventually, she and Emmett and her grandmother find themselves making the pilgrimage to Washington D.C. to the Vietnam War Memorial.

Media reviews

"Mason's spare prose, so perfectly suited to her unpretentious characters and setting, gives the book a simplicity that is both deceptive and disarming. She displays an ear perfectly tuned to dialogue, an eye that catches every telling detail and quirky mannerism. Tiny, seemingly insignificant observations and revelations accululate almost unnoticed until something trips them up, turning them into literary grenades explosive with meaning."