Dream Baby [Paperback]

Bruce McAllister (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1994

The acclaimed visionary chronicle of the nightmare that was Vietnam. Army nurse Mary Damico can see the future. She knows which soldiers will die on the battlefields. Col. John Bucannon, commander of the CIA's secret psychic warfare project, wants to exploit her dark gift, regardless of the apocalyptic carnage his experiment will unleash.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

McAllister's first novel is a stunning tour de force. After enlisting in the Army as a nurse, young Mary Damico develops a "talent" for dreaming about the future, a device that allows the author to portray the Vietnam War with unforgettable power. Her ability to "see" the soldiers who will be her patients before they in fact are wounded proves devastating to Mary, but not to Col. John Bucannon, who is heading up a CIA experiment to determine the potential of such psychic gifts in warfare. Accordingly, Bucannon has Mary transferred from Cam Rahn Bay to his Central Highlands camp, where many similar "talents" are assembled. Bucannon assigns them dangerous missions to test the accuracy of Mary's dreams. His plans lead to an astounding operation: he sends Mary, her friend and lover Lt. Steve Balsam, mind-reading Captain Kelly and teenaged Corporal Cooper, who "reads" what his German shepherd senses, into North Vietnam. There they are to ferret out plastic explosives hidden by the French in a cave, and use them to blow up the Red River dike. Bucannon's real purpose is not revealed until the first part of a surreal, two-part ending. Masterful interior monologues that yield eerie, tingling tension make this terrifying novel one of the most memorable chronicles of the Vietnam war.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

During the Vietnam War individuals with special powers (ESP, etc.) are assigned to an unusual unit run by John Bucannon, who has gifts himself, and who seeks to exploit all under his command. The team's mission: to go to North Vietnam disguised as Russians and blow up dikes to flood the countryside. The training and the mission are suffused with madness, and the physical horrors are matched with mental ones. Throughout the narrative are interspersed transcripts of interviews, memos, etc. The apocalytic ending does strain the willing suspension of disbelief. Still, the story is fascinating, very well told, and likely to appeal to readers of Vietnam War fiction and nonfiction. A first novel.
-Robert H. Donahugh, Youngstown and Mahoning Cty. P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 434 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (August 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312890257
• ISBN-13: 978-0312890254
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,904,079 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Bruce McAllister is known primarily for his literary fiction and fantasy, science fiction and thriller fiction, which he's been publishing professionally since he was sixteen. He was born in 1946 in Baltimore, MD, to a peripatetic Navy family with an Annapolis-graduate father who served with NATO during the Cold War and an underdog-championing anthropologist/archeologist mother whose specialties were Early Man and Native American studies. As children, he and his brother Jack lived in Florida, Washington D.C., California and Italy. From l974 to l997 he taught at the University of Redlands in southern California, where he helped establish and direct writing programs. Since l998 he has worked as a writing coach and book and screenplay consultant. His short fiction has appeared in literary quarterlies, national magazines, original anthologies, "year's best" anthologies and college readers; won awards from Glimmer Train magazine and the National Endowment for the Arts; and been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula and New Letters awards. His non-fiction articles on sports, popular science and writing have appeared in a variety of magazines and newspapers. He has three wonderful children--Annie, Ben and Elizabeth--and lives in Costa Mesa, California, with his wife, choreographer Amelie Hunter.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unusually well written book, January 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Dream Baby (Paperback)

This book was a real gem to find. Not only is it well written, the characters spring to life and you find yourself dreading the final outcome (to which there are passing references throughout the story). The denouement, when it arrives, is well worth the wait, and totally unexpected. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys stories about the paranormal and the Viet Nam War. I have since re-read the book 4 times.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dream Baby, January 7, 2011

By 

KBreader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dream Baby (Paperback)

Dream Baby is based on fifteen years of research, interviews with two hundred veterans of three American wars who reported paranormal experiences that kept them alive, and actual classified contingency plans to end the war in Vietnam that have still not been made public.

In this acclaimed classic novel of ESP in war--praised by reviewers and readers alike as both a riveting science fiction thriller and one of the finest chronicles of the Vietnam War--young Army Nurse Mary Damico dreams the deaths of soldiers before they happen, but cannot save them. Only when she is recruited for a secret unit of other "esp talents"--one run by a rogue CIA psychiatrist who may be a "talent" himself--can she become the psychic commando she needs to be to stop the psychiatrist's insanity and save those she has come to love.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome book!, March 22, 2000

By 

Dane L. Carlson (Bay Area, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dream Baby (Mass Market Paperback)

Bruce, where are you? This book was so cool. A moody, dark journey through Vietnam. Very surrealistic. I have kept hoping this author would show up with another book, but nothing. A must read in my opinion.