The legacy of the American experience in Vietnam is still unfolding, a matrix of barbed and irreconcilable issues and attitudes that we will carry, in spite of ourselves, into the next century. We are all haunted, no matter where we stood or what we did during those years, by the unappeasable ghosts of American conscience and commitment gone horribly wrong, and by the ambiguous fate of the thousands of Americans left behind - still missing in action, still unaccounted for - the ghostly ranks of the MIAs.
In Us, his fourth novel, Wayne Karlin explores our national obsession with our MIAs in a drama that combines aspects of realistic adventure narrative with a more emblematic quest - sometimes hallucinatory, sometimes hilarious - for the deeper psychological significance these missing men and women hold in the American psyche. Loman, Karlin's protagonist, is a Vietnam vet with a checkered career. He has chosen to remain in Southeast Asia, and owns a bar in Bangkok, mecca for sex tours and cheap drugs, and port of entry for all those who come in search of the "missing."
When a visiting congressman engages him to help establish contact with a group of MIAs the congressman alleges is operating as an independent force with one of the Golden Triangle opium armies, Loman accepts the job, not realizing at first that his search will quickly bring him up against a mind and force with which he is utterly unfamiliar. History, myth, and reality blur as Karlin then enters a world that turns our expectations upside down, a world of mountain spirits, montebanks, and strange rebels. By book's end, Loman has learned again some of the harshest lessons of the war, but also has achieved a measure of peace that had previously escaped him.
Tim O'Brien has written that Wayne Karlin is "one of the most gifted writers to emerge from the Vietnam War." In Us, his best book to date, Karlin probes as deeply into the dark heart of the war and its aftermath as any writer of his generation.
Genre: Historical
In Us, his fourth novel, Wayne Karlin explores our national obsession with our MIAs in a drama that combines aspects of realistic adventure narrative with a more emblematic quest - sometimes hallucinatory, sometimes hilarious - for the deeper psychological significance these missing men and women hold in the American psyche. Loman, Karlin's protagonist, is a Vietnam vet with a checkered career. He has chosen to remain in Southeast Asia, and owns a bar in Bangkok, mecca for sex tours and cheap drugs, and port of entry for all those who come in search of the "missing."
When a visiting congressman engages him to help establish contact with a group of MIAs the congressman alleges is operating as an independent force with one of the Golden Triangle opium armies, Loman accepts the job, not realizing at first that his search will quickly bring him up against a mind and force with which he is utterly unfamiliar. History, myth, and reality blur as Karlin then enters a world that turns our expectations upside down, a world of mountain spirits, montebanks, and strange rebels. By book's end, Loman has learned again some of the harshest lessons of the war, but also has achieved a measure of peace that had previously escaped him.
Tim O'Brien has written that Wayne Karlin is "one of the most gifted writers to emerge from the Vietnam War." In Us, his best book to date, Karlin probes as deeply into the dark heart of the war and its aftermath as any writer of his generation.
Genre: Historical
Used availability for Wayne Karlin's US