![]() ![]() The Colonel, an old military hand turned spook, is part legend and part renegade, operating under questionable authority and the influence of nostalgia, paranoia, and alcohol. intelligence community in the Pacific Rim, in particular on Colonel Francis Xavier Sands and his nephew, William “Skip” Sands. But Johnson’s gaze is trained most firmly on the U.S. The narrative follows a slew of characters: There’s infantryman James Houston and his tunnel rats, rooting out guerrillas Houston’s dysfunctional family in Phoenix Vietcong foot soldier Trung Than, who betrays his cadre by turning double agent and Canadian charity worker Kathy Jones, who runs a clinic for Vietnamese orphans. The reader knows there’s no happy ending to this misadventure the writer’s challenge is to sift through the conflict’s entrails and divine deeper meaning. Denis Johnson, author of Jesus’ Son and currently the Mitte chair of creative writing at Texas State University, summons that communal memory to cast a pall of horror over Tree of Smoke, his first full-length novel in seven years. ![]() Thirty-plus years after helicopter airlifts signaled the fall of Saigon, the name still evokes ghastly images of napalm-scorched children and ad hoc executions by handgun. ![]()
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