I did not remember a Rouenna Zycinski. I was sure I had never known her. But many years ago, according to her letter, we had been neighbors in the same public housing project, on Staten Island. A writer receives a letter from an old acquaintance, recalling their shared childhood and asking if they can meet. Though fascinated by the stories Rouenna tells about her life as a combat nurse in Vietnam, the narrator flatly declines her request that they collaborate on a memoir. It is only later, in the aftermath of Rouenna's shocking death, that the narrator is drawn to write about her friend - and her friend's war. Writing Rouenna's story becomes all-consuming: at once a necessity and the only consolation.