PERFUME RIVER by Pulitzer Prize Novelist Robert Olen Butler - War, Family and Relationships Run Deep

Robert Olen Butler is a prominent writer of historic & psychological fiction and family dynamics all entrenched in emotional credibility.  Butler (b Amer 1945) writes with clarity & understanding for his characters who tend to put up barriers rather than build bridges to benefit relationships. PERFUME RIVER is Butler's latest forceful & engaging novel is a reconnaissance mission aimed at family dynamics, marital relationships, familial obligations & deterioration.  Butler also addresses philosophical issues of war, religion and relevant social issues such as homelessness & gun laws.  The Quinlan brothers, Robert & Jimmy come to a major crossroad during the Vietnam War.  Their tyrannical father fought in WWII and his glory days are behind him as part of the Greatest Generation.  Robert is older & enlists to earn his father's approval.  Jimmy chose to avoid the "illegal & murderous" war justifying himself & those who said no to their county as heroes.  Robert's never served in battle in Vietnam but bares the scars of having killed a man.  H grapples his act & tries to convince himself he was justified along "Stand your ground laws".  Both he & his wife Darla hold this view in contempt.  Robert never confides to his wife Darla about the Vietnamese woman he loved or the man he killed out of fear for himself.  PERFUME RIVERS brims with gleaming insights and murky reasonings.  The major dilemma Butler battles is the question of how soldiers in battle reconcile their lives apart from their killings as humans who are not, in fact killers.   Butler did serve in Vietnam from 1969-71.  In addition to a Pulitzer he has been given the Vietnam Vet's Literary Award for outstanding contribution to American culture.  Relationships between spouses, parents & siblings remonstrate their breakdowns which may have been salved were it not for the loss of connection in mind and heart buried too much incommunicado.  Small things bind men at war as certainly as they are bound by spilt blood.  Simple acts of kindness and spilling of our innermost secrets with  loved ones are the bonds that cement us to each other and make us stronger.  Every page is laden with abandoned mournful precepts.  PERFUME RIVER catapults the reader to consider preconceived notions from different perspectives.