He finds a man named Trung Than who agrees, after which the Colonel steps in, ordering Sands to use his limited proficiency in Vietnamese to investigate Trung’s background. He plans to find a double agent to place false information into the Vietcong’s intelligence. He comes upon an article for which the Colonel has claimed dubious authorship, and is worried about the future of his career.Īfter this realization, Sands changes strategies.

Struggling to fulfill the assignment to his uncle’s expectations, Sands eventually realizes that the Colonel is actually growing insane in his attempts to solve the war. There, living under another name, Sands is directed to gather information about local folklore to gain insight into the Vietcong’s strategies and motivations. In reality, he is transferred to an isolated village, where he has contact with few others beyond his two house servants. In Vietnam, Sands intends to become a key officer in the war effort. After he toils for a while, Sands realizes the cards are largely useless the Colonel transfers him to Vietnam. In the cards, the Colonel believes, lies the key to the United States’ victory. Seemingly destined for the same greatness, the Colonel charges Sands with the task of organizing a mass of unstructured data written on index cards about individuals and events related to the Vietcong. Sands’s uncle is a famous war hero remembered as “the Colonel” in the intelligence community. Skip Sands, a former Air Force official, has been selected to work in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong army striving surreptitiously in Vietnam for political and geographical control.

The book’s title references several Biblical verses thematically related to its discussion of culpability, violence, and chance. The novel moves between 19, setting its epilogue in 1983, in the aftermath of the war. It also follows James Houston, an infantry private, his brother, Bill, and an employee of a Canadian NGO, Kathy Jones.

Set mainly in 1965, it follows Skip Sands, a newly minted CIA agent who goes to Vietnam during the American insurgency. Tree of Smoke is an American novel about the Vietnam War by Denis Johnson.

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson