This novel illuminates the plight of a generation of men and women in post-war Vietnam. It explores issues of family and gender, and charts Vietnam's effort to redefine its relationship to its past and future. The author brings into view the struggle of women who survived their service during the war years. Like male veterans in America and Vietnam, they returned to a society which they had defended, but which in many ways had no place for them. By confronting these issues, Ho Anh Thai has contributed to the debate in Vietnam over the rights of unmarried women with children. Through the lens of this particular time and place, The Women on the Island probes the time-less question of how we find ways to live in harmony with the tangled and contradictory compulsions of our own soul souls.