Vietnam War Fiction

‘Women can be heroes, too’. When twenty-year-old nursing student, Frances “Frankie” McGrath, hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised on California’s idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different path for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the Army Nurses Corps and follows his path.

In this gripping memoir, a former marine returns to Vietnam to try to make sense of the war. Previously published as Brothers in Arms, this edition includes a new preface by the author. When William Broyles Jr. was drafted, he was a twenty-four-year-old student at Oxford University in England, hoping to avoid military service. During his physical exam, however, he realized that he couldn't let social class or education give him special privileges. He joined the marines, and soon commanded an infantry platoon in the foothills near Da Nang.

It was 1970 in a defeated Rhode Island fishing town. Vietnam and Nixon dominated the national news. Both the near and distant future looked bleak. But they were five inseparable high school friends with something incredible in common: an unwavering resolve to look after each other no matter what hell life threw at them. And they were on a mission. The plan was simple: Go off the grid before they turned 18 to avoid the draft. They’d sell some grass, stack some cash, then head west and start a commune. What could possibly go wrong?

It didn't seem possible. Four college students shot dead May 4, 1970, by Ohio National Guardsmen during a protest against the Vietnam War. The shootings at Kent State University would shock the nation and spark a mass student strike across the country, the only one in U.S. history.

Frank Evans is a Navy sailor willing to do whatever is necessary to become a Marine. He's tough enough - and he has a general interested in his success. But success is measured in many ways. Frank finds out combat and the Marine Corps' definition of success change a man.

Robin Moore became one of the first true embedded journalists by training with and fighting alongside the Green Berets in Vietnam. Though fictionalized, his work is an eye-opening exposé of the horrors of the Vietnam War and the basis for the hit John Wayne movie of the same title. Taut, fast-paced, and interspersed with unforgettable accounts of combat, Moore’s novel features an American major who goes "native" with Montagnard tribesmen, a courageous Vietnamese girl who poses as a rabid anti-American Communist to capture a murderous Viet Cong officer, and the unforgettable acts of courage of soldiers in the field.

1960: Against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War, three pairs of fathers and sons must put their honor and bravery to the ultimate test.

 Big Wednesday, based on the cult 1978 film by the same name, follows three California beach buddies begin to realize there is more to life than waxing down their surfboards as they ditch their alcoholic and unruly ways to go fight in the Vietnam War. When they reunite 10 years later, they find that things in Malibu are much different after fighting a war. 

It is the summer of 1967. Leo Suther is about to turn 18. This is the summer that everyone has something to teach Leo. His father warns him that "life can turn on a dime." Allie, his girlfriend, wants to teach him about love. Her father, the local communist and civil rights organizer, lectures him on politics and carpentry. And Ryder, a family friend, wants to show Leo the magic of the harmonica, harp of the blues. However, when Leo's life threatens to come unglued, it's his mother's wisdom he turns to. Though she died before Leo was five, her voice lives on in her diaries and poems.

This gripping novel is not only one of the best books written about Vietnam; it is also one of the most powerful anti-war novels in American literature. Walter James has no face. Braiden Chaney has no arms or legs. They lost them 22 years ago, in Vietnam. Now, in the course of one long night in a V.A. hospital, these two soldiers, one black, the other white, reveal how they came to be where they are and what they can only hope to become.

Echo Among Warriors is a story of close combat between two opposing, equally committed adversaries. The powerful narrative immerses the listener in both sides of the battle, playing and replaying the same battle sequence from alternating viewpoints—through the eyes of the Marines and through the eyes of the North Vietnamese. The bullet fired from a Marine's M-16 at a silhouetted enemy solider will in the next chapter tear into the flesh of that crouched NVA trooper. The story represents just one of perhaps thousands of deadly encounters that reflect the reality of battle.

This is the incredible true story of a brave military unit in Vietnam that risked everything to rescue an outnumbered troop under heavy fire-and the 39-year odyssey to recognize their bravery.

One of the most acclaimed books of our time - the definitive Vietnam War exposé and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. When he came to Vietnam in 1962, Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann was the one clear-sighted participant in an enterprise riddled with arrogance and self-deception, a charismatic soldier who put his life and career on the line in an attempt to convince his superiors that the war should be fought another way. By the time he died in 1972, Vann had embraced the follies he once decried. He died believing that the war had been won.

The year is 1967 and the Vietnam War is raging. Lieutenant Ben Kinkaid of the US military police is patrolling the chaotic streets of Saigon after curfew when he crosses paths with US Army clerk Tommy Banks and his girlfriend, Grace Waverly. Grace says she’s a peace tourist, but she’s also a member of RAW—an anti-war group bent on stopping the war by any means necessary.

These 12 stories reflect the combat infantry experience of the Vietnam War--in the gritty “Tanks”, “Called of God”, and “Incubation Period”. There’s also the woman’s perspective of Arlene, a naive Red Cross volunteer or “Doughnut Dolly” in “A Man’s World".

19 October 1950. The war is not going to plan. In Paris, politicians gather to discuss what to do about Indochina. The conflict is unpopular back home in France: too expensive, and too far away for the public to care. Withdrawal is not an option – a global power cannot surrender to an army of peasants – but victory is impossible without more soldiers and more money. The soldiers can be sourced from the colonies, but the money is out of the question. A solution needs to be found.

Robert Peterson arrived in Vietnam in the fall of 1966, a young American ready to serve his country and seize his destiny. What happened in that jungle war would change his life forever. Peterson vividly relives the tense patrols in the Viet Cong-infested Central Highlands, the fierce firefights along the Cambodian border, the ambushes and enemy charges.

Imagine that there are American MIAs who chose to remain missing after the Vietnam War. Imagine that there is a family in which four generations of strong, alluring women have shared a mysterious connection to an outlandish figure from Japanese folklore. Imagine just those things (don’t even try to imagine the love story) and you’ll have a foretaste of Tom Robbins’s eighth and perhaps most beautifully crafted novel--a work as timeless as myth yet as topical as the latest international threat.

The peak of the hot season, 1942: The wars in Europe and Asia and the Japanese occupation have upset the uneasy balance of French Indochina. In the Vietnamese fishing village of Phan Thiet, Tuyet ekes out a living at a small storefront with her aunt Coi, her cousin Ha, and her two-year-old daughter, Anh. She can hardly remember her luxurious life in the city of Saigon, which she left just two years ago.

Amity Whitford dared to stake her own claim on the endless plains of Western Kansas. She built her homestead, Dove's Nest, with her bare hands. But the ravages of the sun and drying winds took their toll.