Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Acclaimed crime writer Kent Anderson's "fiercely authentic and deeply disturbing" police novel, following a Vietnam veteran turned cop on the meanest streets of 1970s Portland, Oregon (Los Angeles Times).
Two kinds of cops find their way to Portland's North Precinct: those who are sent there as punishment, and those who come--and stay--for the action. Office Hanson is the second kind, a veteran who survived the war in Vietnam only to find he wanted to keep fighting at home. Hanson is good at war, and at least here he can pick his battles following his own code of justice.
But Hanson can't outrun his memories of another, warmer battleground. His past threatens his future now: An enemy in the department is determined outfight Hanson, by unearthing the darkest agonies of his war record. When another piece of his past surfaces, Hanson risks his career, his sanity, even his life, for honor.
Synopsis
Kent Anderson's stunning debut novel is a modern classic, a harrowing, authentic picture of one American soldier's experience of the Vietnam War--unlike anything else in war literature (Los Angeles Review of Books).
Hanson joins the Green Berets fresh out of college. Carrying a volume of Yeats's poems in his uniform pocket, he has no idea of what he's about to face in Vietnam--from the enemy, from his fellow soldiers, or within himself. In vivid, nightmarish, and finely etched prose, Kent Anderson takes us through Hanson's two tours of duty and a bitter, ill-fated return to civilian life in-between, capturing the day-to-day process of war like no writer before or since.