First published 1996
Paxton Andrews travels from her Savannah high school to Berkeley college and then to Saigon as a war correspondent. In Vietnam, she encounters soldiers whose lives the conflict will transform beyond recognition. Peter Wilson arrives fresh from law school as a new recruit bound for Da Nang. Veteran AP correspondent Ralph Johnson has covered the war from its early days and understands every angle of the conflict. Captain Bill Quinn leads the Cu Chi tunnel rats on his fourth deployment, seemingly invincible. Sergeant Tony Campobello brings his New York street rage to the Vietnamese battlefields. Andrews spends seven years writing her celebrated front-line newspaper column before returning to America and covering the Paris peace negotiations. The war leaves permanent marks on both the journalist and the fighting men she chronicles.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, war, journalism
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, war
Setting: Savannah, Berkeley, Saigon, Da Nang, Cu Chi
Period: Vietnam War
435 pages · Paperback · Sperling Paperback
Content warnings: war