This Way To Heaven - Softcover

Foley, Tom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812590082 ISBN 13: 9780812590081

Publisher: Forge Books, 2001

Synopsis

American soldier Robert Jackson joined the army to earn tuition for college; he wanted only to settle down with his high school sweetheart and start a family. He came to Bosnia to help the U.N. forces keep the peace -- only to find that there was no peace to keep. The U.N. arms embargo has left the Muslims defenseless to attacks by Serbs, the Muslim-Croat alliance is shaky at best, and the Serbs are slowly but surely "cleansing" the town of Bosia of Muslims and Croats -- leaving a horrifying death-toll in their wake. Frustrated by his inability to help the Bosnian people, Jackson begins running guns with a band of Muslim students. He is soon caught by the army, and runs off with his young cohorts to avoid standing trial -- losing forever his dreams of peace and prosperity with his love.

"Colonel" Samuel West is sent to Jackson by a trusted benefactor with a mission that West says could "end the war." He needs Jackson to lead him through dangerous northern territory -- and that's where their hellish adventure begins. Stopping for supplies in the wrong town at the wrong time leaves Jackson and West prisoners of the Serbian Chetniks, beginning them on a harrowing journey that leads through the most devastated towns, into a Serbian concentration camp, through the falling city of Jacje, and finally, Jackson hopes, to freedom at the end of a long and dangerous refugee trail.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

In this powerful action novel based on Foley's travels through wartime Bosnia, protagonist Robert Jackson is an American gun smuggler trying to do the right thing in a conflict in which almost everyoneDSerbs, Croats and the indifferent WestDseems to be in the wrong. Jackson's smuggling operation makes him a criminal in the eyes of the UN, in whose military force he once served. The U.S. turns its back on him, too, preventing him from ever returning home to be with his fianc e, Maria. Trapped in Eastern Europe, he concentrates on providing Bosnian Muslims with the arms they sorely need, aided financially by Israeli diplomat Abram Katz. Jackson's breathless adventures begin when Katz sets him up with assassin Samuel West, who is on a mission to end the war and needs Jackson to guide him into Serbian territory. With his colorful partner Zarko, Jackson leads West north into the jet black heart of ethnic hatred and uninhibited barbarity, which Foley unflinchingly documents. From the relatively safe haven of Dubrovnik, the three journey farther inland to villages under bombardment, now effectively Muslim ghettos. The residents are either slaughtered or forcibly taken, as Jackson and West are, to Serbian concentration camps like Omarska, where women are raped and men brutally tortured before being killed. While employing his considerable narrative powers to manipulate multiple plotlines, Foley objectively presents the Balkans' political and historical complexities, slipping behind the Maginot line of statistics and political spin to make plain the terrible human suffering of the men, women and children afflicted by the conflict. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A young American soldier lives a nightmare in this brutal story set in war-torn Bosnia. On duty with the UN peace-keeping forces, Lieutenant Robert Jackson commits an essentially decent but drastically illegal act that changes his life forever. He deserts--out of empathy for a people who, he feels, have been betrayed: no weapons, no help of any kind from any source offered the beleaguered Bosnian Muslims, who thus face the marauding Serbs (and "ethnic cleansing"): broomsticks vs. tanks. It's Jackson's meeting with the heroic guerrilla fighter Aleksandar that leads directly to nonstop confrontations with atrocities he can't bear to turn his back on. With Aleksandar's help, he becomes an accomplished gunrunner. Eventually, however, the Serbs catch him and send him to a Dachau-like death camp where escalating horrors are grimly and graphically detailed. Second-novelist Foley (Measuring Lives, 1996) depicts man's inhumanity to man as so pervasive, so ingrained, that the only viable reactions are disbelief or despair. Too much of a bad thing. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Forge Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0812590082
• ISBN 13: 9780812590081
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432