From Publishers Weekly
Having narrowly survived the carnage of the Vietnam War, Marine Sgt. Jack Ramsey fashions a desperate purpose: to escape from a North Vietnamese POW camp where he is tortured, worked to the edge of maddening fatigue and constantly brainwashed. Evading his merciless, sadistic guards, he digs out of a bamboo punishment cage and makes his way through the jungle to the sea where he steals a fishing boat from which a U.S. cutter rescues him. Throughout, flashbacks alternate with chilling details of incarceration. While hardly justifying the war, this lucidly written book provides the reader with a convincing account of a fighting man's decision to prove himself adequate to his brutal and hopeless circumstances. In an ironic epilogue, Ramsey, who does not consider himself heroic, whose sweetheart has abandoned him, whose psychic wounds are deep, finds grief for his fallen comrades the first step in his attempts to cleanse his soul.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Ramsey, a Marine prisoner of war in Vietnam, lives only to escape. He endures his daily routine of work and suffering, interspersed with sessions of torture and humiliation and remembering, until the rainy night he finally does break out. After slashing through the jungle he makes it to a river, the sea, and eventually freedom. The final scene finds him in tears before the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. With staccato sentences and strong detail the author hammers out a classic tale of escape and survival. It should linger long in the memory. The novel's brevity and immediacy (and large print) almost demand reading at one sitting. Highly recommended for all fiction collections. Robert H. Donahugh, Youngstown & Mahoning Cty. P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
