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Absolution: A Novel
by Alice McDermott

Published: 2023-10-31T00:0
Hardcover : 336 pages
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AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award.

You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.

American women?American wives?have been ...

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Introduction

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award.

You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.

American women?American wives?have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.

Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking wry account of that pivotal year and of Charlene’s altruistic machinations, and discovering how their own lives as women on the periphery?of politics, of history, of war, of their husbands’ convictions?have been shaped and burdened by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.

A virtuosic new novel from Alice McDermott, one of our most observant, most affecting writers, about folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice, and, finally, the quest for absolution in a broken world.

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by Jessica C. (see profile) 07/28/24

 
  "Inspires deep thought!"by Gail R. (see profile) 07/21/24


Absolution: Aa Novel, Alice McDermott, author; Jesse Vilinsky, Rachel Kenney, narrators
I am old enough to remember how women were once raised only to go to college to earn an MRS Degree,

... (read more)

 
by Mary L. (see profile) 03/25/24

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