A DANGEROUS COUNTRY

The concluding volume in the author’s Vietnam trilogy.

Kovic, the author of Born on the Fourth of July and Hurricane Street, begins his latest book with a diary from his second tour of duty in Vietnam, followed by his experiences upon returning home. He began as a gung-ho Marine who wanted action, and he recounts Marines in training yelling, “Kill Viet Cong, kill!” But the entries gradually become more sober and less jingoistic, and the diary ends abruptly with Kovic describing how a bullet severed his spinal cord and left him paralyzed in 1968, after which he returned to the U.S., underwent treatment and rehabilitation, and became an antiwar activist. Born on the Fourth of July, published in 1976, gave him a degree of recognition, and for a while, he had a successful career speaking out against the war. But his paralysis and the traumatic memories of the war—especially an incident in which he accidentally shot and killed one of his own men—began to take a toll on him. The author describes how a love affair in New York soured, noting how “my physical and sexual loss in Vietnam had been a devastating blow.” An attempt at a long novel to bring together his experiences never jelled—he meant it to be a tribute to the soldier he’d shot—and this book is meant in part to recapture that purpose. At times, the narrative is uncomfortably graphic, with the author providing a vivid inside view of PTSD at work. We follow Kovic from coast to coast as he tries to find a way to overcome his problems, whether through therapy or with the help of friends and fellow veterans, and his experiences make for illuminating reading.

A powerful, often unsettling book by one of the major voices to come out of the Vietnam era.