The American spans fifty years, as a former US tunnel rat - disfigured in the war, but left with strange gifts - is summoned back to Vietnam by the son of an old friend, to find the man who killed his friend's eight-year-old daughter. His quest for justice will not only cause him to cross paths with two other Americans - one a cold-blooded assassin, the other a bloodthirsty madman - but also a tormented ghost, and an infestation of living evil. The American is a gritty crime thriller laced with the supernatural, set in a vividly rendered Vietnam.