It's been 40 years since the Vietnam War, but South Carolina builder John Porter is still fighting the enemy in his mind. Fifty miles away, Lisa Le is trying to connect with her Vietnamese mother. Each is held captive in a private hell until a modern-day land mine explodes.
A beautiful young woman. An American soldier. A war-torn country. Nearly forty years of silence.
Now, two daughters search for the truth they hope will set them free and the elusive peace their parents have never found.
In the South Carolina Lowcountry, a young mother named Katherine Ann is struggling to help her tempestuous father by plunging into a world of secrets he never talks about. A fry cook named Lisa is trying desperately to reach her grieving Vietnamese mother who has never fully adjusted to life in the States. And somewhere far away, a lost soul named Ernest is drifting, treading water, searching for what he lost on a long-ago mountain.
They're all yearning for connection. For the war that touched them to finally end. For their hundred years of happiness at long last to begin.
From the beloved author of "The Spirit of Sweetgrass" and "Trouble the Water" comes this generous story of family, war, loss, and longing . . . of the ways we hide from those we love, and the ways that love finds us anyway.