Fire Summer is a work of fiction. While many characters are inspired by real life, places depicted have geographical correspondence, and events are noted in history, the story is fictitious. I am grateful to the John Young Scholarship in the Arts for enabling my research in Vietnam in 2007. I thank my dissertation committee at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa: Craig Howes for my essential gesture, Cristina Bacchilega for asking questions of stones, and Robert Onopa for saying no in 1965 and yes in 2010. I am indebted to my teachers—Colleen Majors at Stephen Girard Elementary School; Ed Kiernan, Joan Gucken, Nancy Tregnan, and especially Naomi Kuziemski for her loving guidance at the Philadelphia High School for Girls; John O’Neill, Douglas Raybeck, and William Rosenfeld at Hamilton College; Paul Lyons, Kathy Phillips, Mark Heberle, Reinhard Friederich, Robert Shapard, Ian MacMillan, Steven Goldsberry, and Chung-ying Cheng at the University of Hawai‘i at Mãnoa. I thank Frank Gallo, Susan Branz, Cuong Mai, Kazuyo Karan, Jacinta Suataute Galea‘i, Jocelyn Cardenas, Ralph Lalepa Koga, Michael and Tiffany Tsai, Bruce and Mahany Lindquist, and Mark McGrath and Janet J. Graham for friendship; Kate Gale, Mark E. Cull, Tobi Harper, Monica Fernandez, Natasha McClellan, Rebeccah Sanhueza, and Tansica Sunkamaneevongse at the impeccable Red Hen Press for shepherding a hatchling; Jennifer Lyons for literary representation and much more; Nolan W. K. Kim, Gypsy Love-Sponge, Bingo Hunkaluv, Moñino Crawdad, Sophie Charlotte Mucho Más, and Matilda Lani Abdullah for love, inspiration, and the journey home.