Perfume River by Robert Olen Butler

 

We meet Robert Quinlan and his wife Darla right after he meets a Vietnam War veteran, Bob, one night at a local restaurant and buys him supper.  It brings memories back to Robert who met his wife after she marched in an antiwar rally when he had just returned from Vietnam.  He served near the Perfume River and he still has many secrets he has never told anyone.  The woman he loved there.  What he did the night of Tet offensive.  

Robert went to try to please his father.  The war tore his family apart.  His younger brother Jimmy went to Canada to avoid the draft and never returned.  He is still there, still with the woman who went there with him.  The brothers were also torn apart, neither approving of the other's choices.  The family hasn't seen or spoken with Jimmy in decades.  

Now things come to a head.  Robert's father falls and breaks his hip and at age eighty-nine, the prognosis isn't good.  The family reaches out to Jimmy but he remains aloof.  Bob, the homeless veteran, is attacked when seeking shelter and it takes him back to his days of service.  The three men will come together in an explosive moment that echoes the violence that the war perpetrated on everything and everyone.

Robert Olen Butler is a distinguished author who has won the Pulitzer Prize along with many other honors.  Like his protagonist in this novel, he teaches at Florida State.  This novel explores the impact that the Vietnam War had on families and individuals and how war resonates down through the years, sometimes separating those who served and often damaging them in ways that one never recovers from.  The writing is spare yet draws the reader in and for those who lived through the Vietnam War, reminiscent of those times in ways both good and bad.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.