Fiction. Elise understands her father—a Vietnam vet who abandoned her when she was an infant—about as much as she does her church organist mother and the rest of their suburban Virginia town. When even that thin thread of connection is suddenly severed, Elise is flung across the world, to Southeast Asia. Tracing the steps her father took through the war, Elise searches for a connection—with his ghost, with other travelers, with the foreign culture and environment she experiences. In a series of linked short stories, TALISMANS follows Elise's journey to learn what she must hold onto, and what she must leave behind.