After living on a remote Pacific island for seven years, veteran Leo Markin returns to the blue-collar Massachusetts town of his youth where he must choose between remaining in modern America or returning to dreamlike Losapas

Reviews

Leo Markin, the protagonist of Merullo's beautifully realized first novel, is an ex-Marine tortured by his memories of the war in Vietnam. This conflict shook his faith in Catholicism and his trust in the military--which had been another kind of religion for him. It likewise made him question the canons of his Boston childhood--the ideals of Manhood, Family and Patriotism. We find him first very far from Boston on Losapas, a Micronesian island. Here Leo has arrived at peace with men and women who, he says, live so gently with the earth and one another that to speak about sin among them was almost to invent the concept. But then comes an emissary from the bigger world "back home," and Leo is forced to make a choice--what truly is his home? Against his will, he's drawn back to the ethnic Boston suburb where he'd grown up; there he learns that to live in Losapas he had to leave it. The author handles these themes with expert care, and without a trace of mawkishness.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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.

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