Award-winning LFP author presents her book about the Vietnam war era at Third Place Books on Saturday

In 1968–69, the US involvement in Vietnam reached its peak with close to 550,000 military personnel in-country. The anti-war movement was also peaking, and, on November 15, 1969, the largest anti-war protest in US history took place, when an equal number ­of people – half a million – participated in a peaceful demonstration against the war in Washington, D.C. 

Alice K. Boatwright was in Washington that day, and her experiences during those war years and after were the inspiration for her 2012 book, COLLATERAL DAMAGE, which has just been released by Standing Stone Books in a new edition, marking their 50th anniversary.

On Saturday, October 19th, at 6pm, Boatwright will launch the new edition at Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park. The event will include both a reading and discussion.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE is three linked novellas set in the US at the height of the war, and in the US and Vietnam at key moments in the post-war years. It's not about the fighting, but rather traces the long-term impact of the war on those who fought, those who resisted, and the families and friends caught between them.

While 50 years have now passed, the fissures in American society that opened during the Vietnam era remain painfully evident. Underlying each story are the same unanswered questions about the wars we continue to engage in today: what is justified and when, who will fight and why, and will any good come of it in the end?

COLLATERAL DAMAGE was a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, winner of a bronze medal for literary fiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and a Small Press Distribution bestseller. It is available from Small Press Distribution and Standing Stone Books, as well as bookstores and online retailers.

Alice K. Boatwright is the award-winning author of both literary fiction and mysteries. She holds an MFA from Columbia, and formerly taught writing at the University of New Hampshire, UC Berkeley Extension, the American School of Paris and elsewhere. In addition to COLLATERAL DAMAGE, she has published a chapbook of stories set in the San Juans, SEA, SKY, ISLANDS (Noontime Books, 2019); numerous short stories in journals such as CALYX; and the popular Ellie Kent mysteries. An alumna of Hedgebrook, she has lived in Lake Forest Park since 2014.