A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - Robert Olen Butler

I have no hatred in me. I'm almost certain of that. I fought for my country long enough to lose my wife to another man, a cripple. This was because even though I was alive, I was dead to her, being far away. Perhaps it bothers me a little that his deformity was something he was born with and not earned in the war. But even that doesn't matter. In the end, my country itself was lost and I am no longer there and the two of them are surely suffering, from what I read in the papers about life in a unified Vietnam. They mean nothing to me, really. It seems strange even to mention them like this, and it is stranger still to speak of them before I speak of the man who suffered the most complicated feeling I could imagine. It is he who makes me feel sometimes that I am sitting with my legs crossed in an attitude of peace and with an acceptance of all that I've been taught about the suffering that comes from desire.

This book is probably the best collection of short stories I have ever read. Not surprising that it won the Pulitzer Prize. Butler has crafted a book that tells the human side of the Vietnam war. Each story, which read like chapters in a novel, is a tale told in first person. Most of the stories are told by Vietnamese immigrants living in Louisiana. They all have a unique relationship to the war ranging from military officer to prostitute. The last tale is told from the perspective of a US soldier who is not missing in action, but voluntarily chose to spend the rest of his life with a woman in Vietnam. The author is amazing in his ability to realistically capture differing and believable voices for a wide variety of personalities. He captures huges emotions and politics in simple situations.

There has been so much attention given to Vietnam. This book is the most human and the most touching I have read. The author has made the storytellers incredibly real with intriguing tales filled with a cornucopia of emotions, including humor. I finished each short story saying "Wow!" to myself. This is a great book in everyway.