A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

Summary

A linked collection of fifteen stories narrated by Vietnamese immigrants who have resettled in the bayou towns of southern Louisiana, each grappling in a different voice with memory, displacement, and the long shadow of war. Butler weaves folklore, Buddhist and Catholic imagery, and quiet domestic detail into a deeply empathetic chorus of refugee experience. The book stands as an unusual example of cross-cultural first-person ventriloquism in American short fiction.