Tom speaks with novelist Alice McDermott about her latest novel, "Absolution." The story is set in Vietnam in the earliest days of the war and explores the lives of the American military wives. The book places at its center a young woman, newly married, living in an unfamiliar place, submerged in an unfamiliar milieu of military personnel, consultants and contractors.

It is an intimate portrait of a person finding her way, and a telling chronicle of characters that are usually cast as ancillary and secondary.

Alice McDermott is set to speak about her book at 6:00pm at the Bird in Hand Bookstore in Charles Village in Baltimore.