Tree of Smoke

Tree of Smoke is a novel written about the Vietnam War and published in 2007.

Tree of Smoke follows Skip Sands, a CIA agent, who was assigned to perform PsyOps against the Vietcong in 1965. The story also introduces Bill and James Houston, brothers from Arizona who find themselves in the middle of the conflict in Vietnam and must try to overcome the confusion of war.

• "it will grab you eventually, and gets inside your head like the war it is describing—mystifying, horrifying, mesmerizing. Johnson, a poet, ex-junkie and adventure journalist, has written a book that by the end wraps around you as tightly as a jungle snake." - David Ignatius, Washington Post
• "When the book ends, in a heartbreaking soliloquy from Kathy (fittingly, a Canadian) on the occasion of a war orphan benefit in a Minneapolis Radisson, you feel that America's Vietnam experience has been brought to a closure that's as good as we'll ever get" - Publishers Weekly

• • Mahalo's Guide to Denis Johnson
• Wikipedia: Denis Johnson
• BookBrowse: Denis Johnson Biography
• San Francisco Reader: A Conversation with Denis Johnson
• Radio Free Mike: Poet of the Fallen World: Denis Johnson