Novels about the Vietnam War

In July 1963 President John F. Kennedy stated about the war in Vietnam, "To withdraw from that effort would mean a collapse  not only of South Vietnam, but of Southeast Asia. So we are going to stay there." 

Men in Green Faces: Novels about the Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a protracted military conflict between the Communist forces of North Vietnam supported by China and the former USSR and the non-Communist forces of South Vietnam supported by the United States. These stories cover different aspects of the war
Berent, Mark. Storm Flight.
Special Forces Colonel Wolf Lochert exposes that American POWs with special skills or knowledge are held in a secret prison waiting transport to Russia and they can only be saved by a daring raid.
Butler, Robert Olen. The Deep Green Sea.
Traces the romance between a Vietnamese woman whose family is killed in the war and an American veteran returning to Vietnam to make peace with the past.
Coonts, Stephen Flight of the Intruder.
During the Vietnam War, attack pilot Jake Grafton, struggling with his conscience and trying to find meaning to all the senseless death and destruction, decides to plan an illegal bombing raid into the heart of Hanoi.
Clancy, Tom. Without Remorse.
In order to save himself and stop a sinister group of men, John Clark undertakes a terrifying mission into the netherworld of international conspiracy.

Crocker, Gareth. Finding Jack.

Joining the flagging war effort in Vietnam after losing his young family in a tragic accident, Fletcher Carson rescues a wounded yellow Labrador during a mission and faces a difficult choice when the government refuses to transport military dogs back home.

Heath, Layne. Blue Deep.
As the battle for Dien Bien Phu rages, a small-detached regiment of American soldiers assesses the black market in arms being sold to the Viet Minh to gauge the prospects for a U.S. engagement with the insurgents.

Hogan, Linda. People of the whale.

Raised in a remote seaside village, Thomas Witka Just marries Ruth, his beloved since infancy. But an ill-fated decision to fight in Vietnam changes his life forever: cut off from his Native American community, he fathers a child with another woman. When he returns home a hero, he finds his tribe in conflict over the decision to hunt a whale, both a symbol of spirituality and rebirth and a means of survival.

Holland, Thomas. K.I.A.

Dedicated military forensics investigator Kel McKelvey is called upon to apply his exhaustive scrutiny in a case involving suspicious coroners and desperate criminals.

Hunter, Stephen. Dead zero : a Bob Lee Swagger novel.

Marine Corps master sniper Bob Lee Swagger travels to the remote deserts and caves of Afghanistan to track down a renegade Marine who is using extreme measures to complete a mission.

Janko, James. Buffalo Boy and Geronimo : a novel.

The two heroes of the book, Nguyen Luu Mong, the Vietnamese buffalo boy, and Antonio Lucio, the US Chicano medic (Geronimo), both have a deep respect for the natural world, and it is through their eyes that we witness the devastation of the natural world of which they are a part.

Johnson, Denis. Tree of smoke.

The lives of Skip Sands, a spy-in-training engaged in psychological operations against the Vietcong, and brothers Bill and James Houston, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war, intertwine in a novel of America during the Vietnam War.

Just, Ward. Dangerous Friend.
In 1965 Saigon, French planters, American "democratizers," and the Vietnamese become caught up in the growing unrest in Southeast Asia, in a novel that follows political scientist Sydney Parade as he begins to discover the roots of the conflict that is tearing the country apart.

Leimbach, Marti. The man from Saigon : a novel.

It's 1967, and Susan Gifford is one of the first female correspondents on assignment in Saigon, dedicated to her job and passionately in love with an American TV reporter. Son is a Vietnamese photographer anxious to get his work into the American press.

 

Marlantes, Karl. Matterhorn : a novel of the Vietnam War

In the tradition of Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" and James Jones's "The Thin Red Line," Marlantes tells the powerful and compelling story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood.

O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried.
Heroic young men carry the emotional weight of their lives to war in Vietnam in a patchwork account of a modern journey into the heart of darkness.

Rabe, David. Girl by the road at night : a novel of Vietnam.

Private Joseph Whitaker, with his Vietnam deployment papers in hand, spends his last weekend trying to find anyone who will acknowledge what he is about to do matters. In Saigon a prostitute, Quach Ngoc Lan, spends her days haggling and submitting to physical mortification - their chance encounter in Saigon forges a surprising connection.

 Soli, Tatiana. The lotus eaters.

A novel that follows an American female combat photographer in the Vietnam War as she captures the wrenching chaos and finds herself torn between the love of two men.

Webb, James. Lost Soldiers.
Sent to Vietnam to recover the skeleton of an American MIA, former combat Marine Brandon Condley investigates the case of Army Specialist Theodore Deville, a deserter and traitor who had led a Viet Cong ambush against Condley's own men, and embarks on a fierce quest for vengeance, justice, and redemption after he discovers that Deville is still alive.
Wetterhahn, Ralph, Shadowmakers.
Receiving recent photographs of his believed-dead Vietnam POW father, Air Force fighter pilot Will Cadence investigates with the help of forensic anthropologist Gabrielle DeJean and discovers a massive cover-up.