Leaving Losapas - Softcover

Merullo, Roland

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380717506 ISBN 13: 9780380717507

Publisher: Avon Books, 1992

Synopsis

Leaving Losapas begins on a tiny atoll in the equatorial Pacific. Leo Markin, a young US Marine and Vietnam combat veteran who survived the war, found himself so changed by the experience that he simply could not find a way to return to his home, family, and his fiancée in a working class city of his birth outside of Boston. The islanders in Losapas are kind to him-he had been living there for years-and he had found a woman he came to love.

Various events conspire to convince him to return to America, but on his return home he feels lost. He has troubling encounters with his aging father, finds that his fiancée has married another man and appears trapped in an abusive relationship, and his old friends seem like strangers to him.

Leo is torn between the peaceful, natural way of life on the island, and the rougher rules of his upbringing. In the end, though he has sworn to turn his back on physical violence, it is an act of physical violence that convinces him the only place he can live is Losapas. When his father suddenly dies, Leo decides to leave the house he inherits to his former fiancée-thus encouraging her to leave her husband-and he returns to the life he left behind and to his island lover.

Boston Magazine called Leaving Losapas a "great surprising book...the best novel of the year..." and The Rocky Mountain News said "it's a wondrous, spiritually rich story...Merullo has created something of beauty...Leaving Losapas will linger in your mind long after you close its pages."

About this title

About the Author

Roland Merullo is the author of Revere Beach Boulevard, A Russian Requiem, and Leaving Losapas. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and daughters

From Library Journal

In this uneven first novel, a Vietnam vet struggles to make peace with his past. Leo Markin leaves the working-class Boston suburb of Averill Beach shortly after high school, joining the Marines and serving in Vietnam. Physically and spiritually wounded by his war experiences, he retreats to the Micronesian island of Losapas rather than go home. Seven years later, the arrival of an American visitor with ties to Averill Beach shatters his illusive tranquility, and he returns there to find his father a broken man, his hometown in decline. Against a backdrop of ethnic and class rivalries, Markin discovers who he is and where he ultimately belongs. Patches of awkward writing and a somewhat melodramatic conclusion occasionally diminish the power of a strong theme, but the novel is notable for its vivid depiction of two very different locales.
- Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Avon Books
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0380717506
• ISBN 13: 9780380717507
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304