Absolution: A Novel

McDermott, Alice

ISBN 10: 1250911273 ISBN 13: 9781250911278

Publisher: Macmillan Audio, 2023

Synopsis

A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award.

You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.

American women―American wives―have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. 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, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own, inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.

Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking wry account of that pivotal year and of Charlene’s altruistic machinations, and discovering as they do how their own lives as women on the periphery―of politics, of history, of war, of their husbands’ convictions―have been shaped and burdened by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.

A virtuosic new novel from Alice McDermott, one of our most observant, most affecting writers―about folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice, and, finally, the quest for absolution in a broken world.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

About this title

About the Authors

Alice McDermott is the author of nine novels, all published by FSG, including Charming Billy, winner of the National Book Award, and That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This, which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of the essay collection What About the Baby?: Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and other publications. She lives outside Washington, DC.

Jesse Vilinsky is an award-winning narrator and accomplished voice actress. She has recorded over 350 audiobooks, and is known for her ability in bringing forth the strength, truth and vulnerability of her expertly voiced characters, as well as the depth and nuance of each narrative she tells. She is also known for her comedic timing, and quirky YA styling. She strives to make an author’s deftly created world 3D in the listener’s mind, and to aid them, and herself, in disappearing into their stories. She has been nominated for and won two Audie Awards, nominated for five and won two Voice Arts Awards, and has won 14 Earphones Awards.


As a voice actress, she has been featured in many films and television shows, including The Giver, The New Mutants, Yellowstone and Rick & Morty, can also be heard in many major video game projects, such as Dead by Daylight: Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Duty 6: Black Ops and Alone in the Dark.

Edition details

• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1250911273
• ISBN 13: 9781250911278
• Binding: Audio CD
• Number of pages: 11