A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN

A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN Robert Olen Butler (Henry Holt, $19.95) In this Pulitzer Prize-winning story collection, a Vietnamese stripper finds a husband in a gentle Vietnam veteran, a father smarts at the discovery that his American son has repudiated his Vietnamese heritage, and an immigrant couple learn that they have bought into an empty American dream. A Vietnam veteran himself, Robert Olen Butler describes Vietnamese both native and refugee (mostly in his home state, Louisiana) who are negotiating the margins between a ruined national past and a baffling postwar present. Butler's writing is delicate as rice paper and rich with emotional nuance and cross- cultural insight. A -Margot Mifflin