Slow Walk in a Sad Rain - Hardcover

McAfee, John P.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446516422 ISBN 13: 9780446516426

Publisher: Grand Central Pub, 1993

Synopsis

A Special Forces Unit dispatched to the Laotian jungle must cope with day-to-day ordeals, including the nonsensical orders of the higher-ups. A first novel. 17,500 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Born in Clovis, New Mexico in 1947, John grew up with his brother on large ranches in West Texas: Ft. Davis, Alpine, and Van Horn. He led a Huck Finn life and was probably the only kid who had an antelope named Governor for a pet. It slept with him every night until it got too large and aggressive and sent to Yellowstone National Park for breeding stock. His father was a ranch foreman and spent much of his life working ranches for absentee owners. His mother was a professional politician in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he spent many summers fishing the Pecos River and attending the Santa Fe Opera. He was educated through high school and junior college at New Mexico Military Institute, and was commissioned as second lieutenant in the Infantry. He served with the 8th Special Forces Group in South America (Ft. Gulick, CZ) and 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam. He has a BA in English from University of Texas-El Paso and an MA in Education Administration from Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina. He is married to the whimsical artist, Elizabeth McAfee, and they have a son, John Lewis McAfee, who along with his wife, Amy, work in the U.S.Citizenship and Immigration Services for Homeland Security. After a long career in teaching, coaching, and administration, He is now a full-time writer.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this grimly sardonic but strained and only episodically effective first novel about the Vietnam War by a decorated 'Nam veteran, an unnamed American Army captain narrates the story of an infantry unit based in a reconnaissance post near the Laotion border. Although he is nominally in command, the outfit is in effect led by a brutal sergeant called "Shotgun," who serves as an all-purpose scout-sapper-killer. While McAfee invests heavily in irony, his approach could not be less subtle. He writes in a terse, telegraphic series of sentences and one-sentence paragraphs that are obviously intended to drive home any gruesome jokes or conclusions readers may have missed. Shotgun emerges as a cartoon figure in a savage story; the key enlisted men in the outfit, "Quiet Voice" and Spec. 7 Thompson, are puppets in his hands. The novel's key event is the arrival of Col. Basshorn, who orders the small unit on a mission into Laos, where the soldiers encounter Vietcong (although rarely), CIA operatives and drug smugglers as well as blood flukes and other repulsive creatures. McAfee furnishes some vivid description of the Mekong River and its tributaries, and his expository information about armaments is often interesting. Unfortunately, the story never emerges from the screen of nicknames that objectify the chief characters and the black humor that constitutes the book's chief tone.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grand Central Pub
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0446516422
• ISBN 13: 9780446516426
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 239