Tree of Smoke

The story opens in the Philippines in 1963, as news of President Kennedy's murder arrives. Skip Sands, a naive young CIA recruit whose father died in action, works for his uncle, Colonel Francis X. Sands, a secretive veteran of Asian wars who deals in double agents and may be planning a psychological operation whose official standing is unclear. Kept in the dark and living under an alias, Skip falls in love with Kathy, a widowed Canadian nurse, and must decide whether he can serve both his uncle and his country. Year by year to 1970, the novel also follows Bill and James Houston, half-brothers who enlist to escape dead-end lives in Arizona, the North Vietnamese agent Trung and Sergeant Jimmy Storm, through the Tet offensive and a war that spreads across Southeast Asia.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

War, Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

Vietnam, Philippines, United States, 1963–1970

First published

2007

Author's age

58 when first published

ISBN

9780374279127 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, United States)

9781509829996 (Picador, United Kingdom)

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