This brilliantly constructed, deeply moving human novel charts the fates of six couples, immediately following and twenty years after, the Vietnam war - the men who came home profoundly altered and the women who strove to create for them a safe haven, yet in the end could do little more than bear witness to their pain. Veterans Rooster, Frankie and Rod, and their friends return to their civilian lives with giddy expectations, get married, find jobs but two decades later the war is still with them. Rod and Emma face the loss of their house and everything they have worked for, Rooster is alienated from his wife and their rebellious daughter and has taken to living on the streets, Frankie is compelled to return to Vietnam to put his ghosts to rest. The terrible legacy of Vietnam and its effects on the veterans cannot be contained and its devastation embraces lovers, wives, children and friends. Told in a spare yet evocative, absolutely original voice, this is a story of deep hungers, the brevity of solace, and the limits of devotion to help those we love.