Flowers of Dinh Ba Forest — Robert Clark

In this novel of war, love, camaraderie, and betrayal Vietnam veteran Clark centers his plot around a search for a rare orchid in the height of the Vietnam War.
The telling element in any true war story is that it doesn't make sense. Clark's characters - both Vietnamese and American, both men and women - are painfully aware that nothing seems to make sense in the war, that one might as well trek off in search of a deep jungle orchid. It's this very non-sensicality that forges them - foe and friend - into an insane respect, an insane hatred for one another. And it's the search for this rare orchid that gives them the willed deception of meaning, much as if Soren Kierkegaard had leaped from late nineteenth century Sweden into twentieth century Vietnam. And the search also gives Clark's novel a range of characters - without any leap of faith, though with very much satisfaction.