Absolution by Alice McDermott

A riveting account of womena's lives on the margins of the Vietnam War,
from the renowned winner of the National Book Award.
In Saigon in 1963, two young American wives form a wary alliance. Tricia is a
starry-eyed newlywed, married to a rising oil engineer a€oeon loana€ to US
Navy Intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of
three, a talented hostess and determined altruist, on a mission to relieve the a
€oewretchednessa€ she sees all around her.
When Tricia miscarries, Charlene sweeps her into a cabal of well-dressed dogooder American wives. Armed with baskets filled with candy and toys, they
descend on hospitals, orphanages, and a leper colony on the coast,
determined to relieve suffering, no matter the cost.
Sixty years later, Charlenea's daughter reaches out to Tricia, now widowed
and living in Washington. As the two relive their shared experience in Saigon,
they are forced to come to terms with the ways their own lives have been
shaped and stunted by Charlenea's pursuit of a€oeinconsequential good.a€
With a narrative impact that recalls Graham Greenea's The Quiet American,
Alice McDermott confronts the unresolved mysteries and ironies of Americaa's
tragic interference in Southeast Asia.

Alice McDermott is the author of several novels, including The Ninth Hour ;
Someone ; After This ; Child of My Heart ; Charming Billy, winner of the 1998
National Book Award; and At Weddings and Wakesa€ all published by FSG.
That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were all finalists for the
Pulitzer Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times,
The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harpera's Magazine, and elsewhere.
For more than two decades she was the Richard A. Macksey Professor of the
Humanities at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the faculty at the
Sewanee Writers Conference. McDermott lives with her family outside

Washington, D.C.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
On Sale: Nov 7/23
5.38 x 8.25 • 336 pages
9780374610487 • $37.00 • CL - With dust jacket
Fiction / Literary