Synopsis
Months after being shot down in the Vietnam jungle, U.S. Marine pilot Horace Hardy is rescued and returned home, where he must confront a failed farm, a wife and daughter lost to divorce, a drug-running job, and self-enforced isolation
Reviews
Hendricks's first novel is a vivid and powerful account of a marine jet pilot's delayed nervous breakdown upon returning home to the U.S. from North Vietnam. The story is told in terse but occasionally wistful or humorous vignettes tracing the boyhood, youth and maturation of Horace "Truck" Hardy, a preacher's son from the North Carolina countryside. Unlike many other Vietnam-era books, this account offers literary strengths along with graphic adventure: the state of Truck's mind occupies the imagination of the author, himself a former fighter pilot who served in Vietnam. After flying more than 200 missions, whose taut technical details enhance the narrative's immediacy, Truck is shot down behind enemy lines. The destruction of Truck's sanity--initiated in his isolation and paranoia in the North Vietnamese jungle and exacerbated by the crippling bitterness and isolation he suffers on his failed North Carolina homestead (his wife leaves, taking their child)--is gripping in its inexorability, impressive in its deceptively simple presentation. His lingering questions (about loyalty, hypocrisy and the power of drugs on a highly-strung mind) retain their full complexity to the end of this intense, engrossing novel.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"If I get through this, I'll do something worthwhile with the rest of my life." Marine fighter pilot Truck Hardy is shot down while on a bombing mission over North Vietnam. Because of the sensitive border agreement, no attempt is made to rescue him and Truck spends 115 days alone in the bush. Upon returning home to a small Southern town, he desperately tries to settle down to the "worthwhile" life he promised himself, but delayed stress causes him to gradually retreat into isolation. Hendricks's unsympathetic, matter-of-fact style is a welcome relief from the emotional, gut-wrenching prose normally associated with the fictional Vietnam narrative. Much better than Philip Caputo's ham-fisted Indian Country ( LJ 4/1/87), this first novel will complement any war fiction collection.
- Mark Annichiarico, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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