A Thousand Years of Light is a collection of short stories that are full of love and the grief that comes from loving. Based around the loss and shame of a nation, many of the stories indirectly address the Vietnam War – not only the soldiers coming back from war, but what their families were dealing with. This collection faces heartache in a variety of ways such as when a mother buries her daughter's dog, a young Vietnamese girl's village is ransacked by American soldiers, and a couple who lives in a house full of trash copes with the death of their son.