TREE OF SMOKE

Will Patton delivers Denis Johnson’s elegant, earthy, excruciating reflections on the war in Vietnam. Patton is outstanding as he narrates the story of Skip Sands, a CIA spy for “history’s greatest nation” in Vietnam in the ’60s, just before the Tet Offensive. Johnson’s writing sings with truth, poetry, humor, and desperation; the story is as unsentimental and uplifting as it is horrific and painful. Patton’s performance is quiet, powerful, and gut-wrenching. He hurls listeners directly into a tangle of young men “on the cutting edge of reality itself, right where it turns into a dream,” and moments before dream becomes nightmare. This is must listening. Without being preachy, Johnson’s novel clarifies any lingering confusion about that period in our recent history, both at home and in Southeast Asia. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 08]