Army JAG Captain Clay Sanders leaves a wife and baby at Fort Rucker, Alabama, when he reports to Vietnam where his representation of a sergeant accused of raping a beautiful Vietnamese girl leads him down a path of despair to a crisis he never could have imagined. Meanwhile at Fort Rucker, the world of Clay's wife is disrupted by a brash army helicopter pilot and his demented sidekick. Although the setting of Saigon Tea is in Vietnam and Fort Rucker in 1967, the focus of the novel is not on the war, but the impact of the war on interpersonal relationships at home and abroad.