Introduction

Nettie and Andy have been soul mates since childhood. While planning their wedding, Andy receives orders from the Army to deploy immediately to South Vietnam for a year.

Anxious about Andy’s safety, Nettie dives into her work as a nursing intern in the hospital emergency room. When she inadvertently walks in on a nursing supervisor and surgeon during a late-night tryst, the vengeful lovers initiate a campaign to end her career before it starts. Nettie’s only respite is an elderly patient who has everything money can buy?except the one thing he wants.

In Southeast Asia, Andy is leading a long-range reconnaissance squad in an unforgiving jungle when he receives orders to escort a high-ranking female freedom fighter, Bien, to a clandestine meeting with an enemy officer who wants to defect. Previously raped, beaten, and left for dead by North Vietnamese soldiers, Bien is suspicious of the enemy officer’s motives, but she also thinks he may be the younger brother her attackers conscripted into their army as a child. Andy, meanwhile, believes his unit is walking into a trap that could cost them everything.

Struggling to survive in different worlds, Nettie and Andy navigate the best and worst of human nature as they try to find their way back to each other.

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Excerpt

Chapter 1
NETTIE


Nettie took the back stairs from the emergency room to the second floor two at a time. Glancing left and right,
she darted across the hall into the pitch-black recovery room. She needed an oxygen regulator fast, and this unit always had plenty. They just didn’t like to share after-hours. Clicking her penlight on, she hurried past rows of stretchers toward the supply closet but froze as startled shadows thrashed in the corner ahead. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

From the Author:

Nettie
1. What factors contribute to Nettie's ongoing reluctance to reveal Mrs. Woods's affair?
2. In what ways does Nettie's development reflect the 1960s/1970s women's movement?

Andy
3. How do the hardships that his squad endures in the jungle change Andy over time?
4. What about Bien's story reflects the humanity and inhumanity of war?

The Story
5. How is symbolism used throughout the story?

The Author
6. If you read The Wiregrass and Moon Water, was Life Dust a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy?

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