May 14- Absolution by Alice McDermott

336 pages. Fiction. A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award.
Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.