Absolution

"In Absolution, Alice McDermott transports her signature characters – Irish American, Catholic, working-class New Yorkers – to Vietnam, circa 1963. Tricia Kelly is a shy newlywed who aspires “to be a helpmeet for my husband” – an engineer allegedly working for “navy intelligence.” Charlene is a strawberry-blond dynamo of a corporate wife who conscripts Tricia into her charity projects in hospitals and orphanages. McDermott brilliantly evokes the early buildup of American involvement in Vietnam as witnessed by some “minor characters” – expat wives mostly oblivious to the deeper machinations of their husbands and country."