California draftee Jim lands in Vietnam fully aware that his chances of making it back home are minimal at best. On the flight in, he wonders if it’s his last time “in an upright position” before immediately plunging into the visceral reality of war, as he and his fellow troops slog through relentless mud, brutal ambushes, and a sea of black body bags, all while desperately trying to make sense of their seemingly futile missions. Quinnett’s storytelling is steeped in despair, no doubt influenced by his own experience in the Vietnam War, traversing a harsh reality of the costs involved with killing enemies and civilians—while often struggling to distinguish between the two. From the onset, Quinnett questions the war’s purpose through Jim’s eyes, as the narrative, written in a choppy, unsettled style perfectly mimicking a war-time journal, grapples with the timeless question: why war? And how is combat to be endured? Through days defined by omnipresent death and horrific tasks—one of the most poignant is Jim’s job of collecting his dead comrades, a duty that provides a brief respite from battle as they await the arrival of helicopters—Quinnett underscores the bizarre pauses that occur in the otherwise relentless chaos of bloodshed and violence.
Jim’s introspections on the senseless savagery grow as the story progresses, and, while on leave, he describes the incongruity of his time away: “We were jungle refugees, misfits in a foreign land… but then I thought, on the bright side, it was a new adventure, minus the bullets.” Quinnett’s debut is electrifying, a penetrating mix of jarring, desolate observations that will stick with readers long past the last page. When Jim meets a new recruit on his way out, he muses “all I knew was he might get out of the Nam standing up, but he wouldn’t get away free.”
Takeaway: Electrifying narrative of one man’s fight in the Vietnam War.
Comparable Titles: Bennie Adkins’s A Tiger Among Us, Karl Marlantes’s Matterhorn.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
