Against the flaming backdrop of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992, three people's lives collide. Harry Hudson is a journalist fleeing from his past, including a fear-ridden childhood. He stutters and is chronically depressed, and he is aware that he has passed the point at which a victim begins to become a victimizer. In Vietnam he shot a civilian, for reasons he has yet to fathom. Later, while drunk, he watched his 2-year-old daughter drown. His only hope is to effect social change through his job. Exploring the city's lowest dives - the only places where he feels at home - he meets Mama Thuy, a Vietnamese woman struggling to run a Navy bar in a violent Long Beach neighborhood, and Kelly Crenshaw, an African-American prostitute whose husband is in prison. The Chieu Hoi Saloon, both a literary character study and a thriller, asks: Will Harry find the love and redemption he seeks or, blinded by loneliness and need, will he commit yet another crime?