Tree of Smoke

Tree of Smoke is an American novel about the Vietnam War by Denis Johnson. Set mainly in 1965, it follows Skip Sands, a newly minted CIA agent who goes to Vietnam during the American insurgency. It also follows James Houston, an infantry private, his brother, Bill, and an employee of a Canadian NGO, Kathy Jones. The novel moves between 1963 and 1970, setting its epilogue in 1983, in the aftermath of the war. The book’s title references several Biblical verses thematically related to its discussion of culpability, violence, and chance.

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. Sands’s uncle is a famous war hero remembered as “the Colonel” in the intelligence community. 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. In the cards, the Colonel believes, lies the key to the United States’ victory. After he toils for a while, Sands realizes the cards are largely useless; the Colonel transfers him to Vietnam.

In Vietnam, Sands intends to become a key officer in the war effort. In reality, he is transferred to an isolated village, where he has contact with few others beyond his two house servants. There, living under another name, Sands is directed to gather information about local folklore to gain insight into the Vietcong’s strategies and motivations. 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. He comes upon an article for which the Colonel has claimed dubious authorship, and is worried about the future of his career.



After this realization, Sands changes strategies. He plans to find a double agent to place false information into the Vietcong’s intelligence. 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. Without any hard evidence, the Colonel grows paranoid, insinuating that Sands has passed on information to Trung’s Vietcong superiors. Sands feels betrayed by his uncle’s paranoia. Trung is placed in a hotel where an assassin comes for him, but he escapes into the shadows.

Not long after, the Colonel dies. Sands finds out that his uncle’s mistakes will be used to make him a scapegoat for the war hero. Meanwhile, another American spy gives Sands money to help him to vanish for a few years. After starting a new life in hiding, he is discovered, eventually, and charged with arms trafficking. Everyone on his team is executed by hanging.

The story then backtracks to the time when the Colonel and his nephew, Sands, are working together. Bill and James Houston, brothers working for the American military, carry out their duties while being disgusted with the violence of the war. They occasionally send money home to their family, but mostly waste it on alcohol and prostitutes to help repress the horrors. Bill returns first to the United States; initially, he struggles to re-integrate, and goes to prison for some time. When James returns, Bill has been released. Bill, seeing his brother about to follow his own mistaken path, is exasperated to see him eventually go to prison.



Interwoven in the main two narratives, Johnson’s book also considers a few minor narratives of people who try to maintain ordinary life while the Vietnam War rages on. One, a nurse called Kathy, loses her husband early in their marriage when he is killed while working as a priest for a local church. Kathy goes on to work at a company that coordinates adoptions for orphans from Vietnam. Kathy has a short romantic life with Sands and goes through a temporary religious crisis. In another narrative, Hao and Kim, a couple from Vietnam, struggle to remain on good terms with the Colonel. Hao allies with him to give information to the Americans and to begin relationships with several other intelligence officials. Eventually, they secure an escape from Vietnam as a reward for their help.

As the novel ends, all of the living characters are striving to reclaim their lives after the traumas of a decade of war. Circuitous, elliptical, and tragic, Tree of Smoke never gives a clear picture of events to its audience. Rather, it refers to the kind of experience a soldier might experience in a war zone: one riddled by blasts, impressions, and fragments that stream brokenly from the violent sites of experience.