"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. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form an alliance as they balance the era's mandate to be "helpmeets" to their ambitious husbands with their own impulse to "do good" for the people of Vietnam. Sixty years later, Charlene's daughter, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking account of that year and of Charlene's altruistic machinations, and discovering how their own lives as women on the periphery have been shaped by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America's tragic interference in Southeast Asia"-- Back cover.