The Vietnam War has been taught in classrooms and history books for decades — from the years fought, to the lives lost, to the immeasurable heroism, and the widespread anti-war protests. But as most wars go, there is a divide between the romanticized, patriotic myth of war and the grittier, harsher truth of what really went on.
In these five historical fiction novels, we travel across America and Vietnam to take a closer look at the dark reality of war. Some of these books come from authors who lived through it — and carry the war’s repercussions into the present. Even though these stories are fictionalized, they don’t shy away from the truth of history, no matter how painful it is.
The Women by Kristen Hannah
Throughout her entire life, Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s family has drilled into her the belief that there is no greater sacrifice than to serve one’s country. So, at 21, fresh out of nursing school, Frankie enlists as an Army nurse to serve in Vietnam, believing she can make a difference in the war effort. Assigned to a small mobile surgical hospital, Frankie faces soldiers with missing limbs, boys on the verge of death or emotionally devastated by the horrors of war, as she lives through relentless monsoons, blistering heat, and constant bombings.
Back at home, Frankie discovers an America different from the one she left behind — she is spat upon, shamed, and ignored by the country whose freedom she has sworn to protect. The country is politically divided by the war, and protests for civil rights and women’s equality. Vietnam veterans are viewed as pariahs, and she finds no support for either the physical or emotional battle scars left by the war. Kristen Hannah addresses the invisible women of the Vietnam War, shining a light on the maltreatment of heroic men and women veterans by their fellow Americans and a warmonger government.
The War You’ve Always Wanted by Mike McLaughlin
Pat Dolan grew up idolizing his father who came back from World War II with medals, pictures and memories that made it all seem like a great adventure to his son. But, when Dolan enlists in the Army and goes to Vietnam – where he eventually becomes an Army combat correspondent, Dolan finds out that this war is somehow completely different than he expected.
At first, the job of being an Army combat correspondent is more boring than dangerous – as he writes countless articles and covers event after event for his military bosses without ever really seeing any serious combat or even firing his rifle. Soon, his fear of dying in Vietnam before his tour of duty ends is not so terrifying, and he falls into a comfortable rhythm of doing his job. And suddenly, everything changes in a blinding twist of fate where Pat Dolan learns the true horror about war and the pain and death it inflicts on everyone involved.
(Read the review and check out this interview with the author.)
The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
This beautifully told story is a thorough and honest dive into the tragedy of war and the effect it has on a tightly-knit community. From communism to the split of North and South Vietnam to the Vietnam War and the Land Reform, we follow four generations of a Vietnamese family through the eyes of a grandmother and her granddaughter.
Twelve-year-old Young Huong lives with her grandmother in Hanoi. Her father went to war four years prior and hasn’t returned, and her mother, a doctor, has left to search for him. While the family hides out in the mountains to escape the bombings, the grandmother shares stories of her childhood, traditions and customs. Huong and her grandmother return to Hanoi to find their house destroyed, and the endless, painful waiting for relatives to return from the war becomes a way of life. Huong’s mother returns home without her husband, full of grief and in dire need of healing from the unimaginable trauma she has faced.
The author says in an interview, “Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the novel leads readers through 20th-century Vietnamese history…The American involvement in the Vietnam War is vivid in this book, though it is seen via the eyes of Vietnamese women.”
The First Door is the Final Exit by Timothy Kenneth O’Neil
Winston, a 19-year-old musician with absolutely no urges to fight and kill, is drafted and must answer the call for his country. His first wake-up call is the cheers of soldiers upon his arrival in Vietnam. But they’re not cheering for the new recruits, they’re ready to take their seats on the plane home to America. “From then on, there would be only memories and nightmares.”
Back home, Veronica is overcome with the loneliness and fear of losing the man she loves. She writes Winston letters, but she is living her own special purgatory, waiting for his return.
Meanwhile, the reality of war creeps in. Author Timothy O’Neil, a veteran himself, remembers the friends blown up into pieces, blood seeping into the ground, last words gasped, the terror of the quiet and the darkness. Soldiers pop open claymore mines to dig out the plastic explosive to heat up their rations, root through the pockets of the dead for treasures and souvenirs, cry out in their sleep, and teeter between heroism and cowardice. This is an unsettling and powerful love story wrapped up in the truth of the Vietnam War.
A Bend in the River by Libby Fischer Hellman
Two young South Vietnamese sisters have their childhoods changed forever when U.S. soldiers invade their small village one morning in March 1968 to hunt down Viet Cong. Seventeen-year-old Trang Tâm, about to graduate, worries about how she will continue her studies at University, while 14-year-old Linh Mai hopes for an arranged marriage to the handsome son of a wealthy sampan builder. Mai becomes a hostess at the Stardust Lounge and Tâm goes to the jungle to train and fight with the Viet Cong. For the next 10 years, neither sister is aware of whether the other is still alive as they struggle to survive a war that breaks their country in half. As happens in civil war, no one trusts the other side, and even two sisters who love each other wonder if the other can be trusted.
The Vietnam War is imagined quite differently from American retellings as it is told from the intensely personal perspective of the Vietnamese people. This thought-provoking read offers interesting nuance and added depth to a war we thought we knew but maybe did not entirely understand.
