An amazing debut novel that is so captivating from the first chapter you feel compelled to keep reading.  The scene that many of us witnessed in 1975 in Saigon as the last helicopter is lifting off from the roof of the American Embassy is the beginning of the story.  The author describes this scene so realistically you can feel the panic and experience the chaos of those trying to get out of Saigon as the city falls to the North Vietnamese.  From this point on we backtrack to 1965 when Helen Adams, an American woman, goes to Vietnam hoping to make a name for herself with capturing “the photograph” that shows the pain and misery of war. She is young and inexperienced.   Helen very quickly meets Sam Darrow, who not only becomes her mentor but eventually  her lover.  Sam has become “addicted” to photographing wars, which initially Helen does not understand until she finds she has become the same kind of person. 

Her second love is with Linh, the Vietnamese translator/assistant who  has been assigned to help Helen.  Through Linh we learn more about how the war affected both the North and South Vietnamese people.  The author does not takes sides, but presents the story balanced from all perspectives, the horrors of war are not sugar coated. This is not a light read by any means, but a different perspective of the Vietnam war told through the experiences of photojournalists trying to stay safe and cover a war. ~Cindy