American women – American wives – have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Set mostly in Saigon in 1963 it traces an unlikely friendship between two young Americans whose husbands are either supporting the war effort or profiting from it. One is a shy newlywed whose husband is on loan to navy intelligence. The other is a practiced corporate spouse and mother, a beauty and a bully.

As they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmates” to their ambitious husbands, they try to “do good” for hospitalized children with baskets of candy and toys. One of their projects raised money from marketing “Saigon Barbies” outfitted in Vietnamese attire. Their charitable schemes take them far outside the gated confines of their neighborhood where they reckon with a part of Vietnam mostly unknown to the men.

Sixty years later, in letters, there is a look back that is both wistful and judgmental of the altruistic machinations and reflections on their own lives as women on the periphery of politics, history, and war.