Marking Time

"It has been said that films about Vietnam began with the advocacy of diose who stayed home, then portrayed the fantasies of men who wished they had gone, and only recently (as in Platoon) have given us the impressions of those who actually did go. Booklovers know that all along veterans have written jolting and thoughtful accounts of their experiences. A former Marine sergeant, memoirist, and poet of standing, Bill Ehrhart has proven one of the most compelling witnesses. His latest work, reading like a novel, documents his troubled return to American society—the sorting out, looking-into process that produced so many veteran suicides. Ehrhart's tortured progress through Swarthmore and the corridors of memory and heart finally takes him to sea, where a deckhand friend suggests he become a writer. Anyone concerned with human growth and the scar this war left on our country will read Marking
Time profitably and be glad that Ehrhart followed that advice—and his own instincts." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)