Customer Reviews

INDIAN COUNTRY.

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an extraordinarily good read. The character development is complex, non-patronising, well researched, and above all entertaining.
This is not a light action read by any stretch of the imagination. Rather a detailed look at the complexity of human relationships including the hope, the joy, the intentional, and more often unintentional pain that these combined with unavoidable, cataclysmic events evoke.
Philip deals sensitively, and sometimes brusqely, with interracial issues (in this case particularly native Indian, but also Scandinavian), the whole pre- and post-Vietnam thing (from a sometimes scarily detailed perspective), marriage, work, intimate friendships, and the remote lifestyle of the logging industry in Northern USA.
I found the end simply mind blowing and would recommend this book to anyone who has thought seriously about their own sanity, who has served in the Forces whether or not they agreed with their country's ideology, who has hurt or been hurt by someone. Of course, if you don't fit into the above categories, you probably haven't lived :o)
It was a pleasant change from the hackneyed descriptions that plague so many of our current best selling authors. I guess this book isn't a best seller simply because it strikes so close to home.
If you read nothing else this year, get this book!

It's been years since I first read Phillip Caputo's "Indian Country", but I still remember it very well. It's the kind of story that really stays with you - the troubled Vietnam combat vet dealing with flashbacks and terrible memories, the earthy, loving, loyal wife struggling to understand, and the child at the center of this volatile family.
It is a wonderful book, deeply moving and emotional, and has the ring of truth. I was moved to tears several times in the reading of this novel and I heartily recommend it to anyone who is in search of something meaningful to read. If you're looking for simple, escapist fiction, this is not the book for you. Read "Indian Country" and it will stay with you for the rest of your life.

This is a powerful story about a Vietnam vet in moral agony more than a decade after the war. Starkman, the hero, survives the war, though his best friend, an Ojibwa Indian, does not. Though he leaves the horror of Vietnam, that horror does not leave Starkman -- it stays with him and drives him to the brink of insanity. Like it has with most vets, the war they fought in becomes part of the person. Thus Starkman sees life and relationships in war and survival terms: he thinks in the same terms he thought in when he was in Nam, and Caputo does a wonderful job of getting into Starkman's mind and making the reader see the world the way Starkman does. These things have become a part of Starkman and in order to live, he has to let go, not of them (that would be impossible), but of their intensity. He does this by going back into the forest in the Upper Peninsula: "Indian Country." Highly recommended.

Phillip Caputo was first published in 1979, his book "A Rumor of War" that is a Vietnam classic. As a US Marine second lieutenant during the "grand little war" in Vietnam in 1965, he watched a little war turn into a very big one and paid a very heavy price along the way. Moreover, as a civilian journalist, he was present during the fall of Saigon in 1975 and caught one of the last helicopter flights out. It's all caught in that book, but this had to effect my opinion of this one.

"Indian Country" is a mind-blowing novel to which a lot of people will be able to relate. It is maybe Caputo's hardest hitting writing ever: It tells the story of a Christan Starkman, who's best friend is an Americanized Michigan Iroquois native American boy, inexplicably named Bonny George.

Starkman's dad is a fire-brand Christian preacher, totally anti-war, and wants him to be the same. After enrolling at divinity school he's got a deferment. Bonny George gets his draft notice (the time period is 1968-9) and Starkman decides to enlist also. The rest i found a very good read, there are many twists and turns here: Starkman before and after, supreme soul-killing guilt, war and ant-war issues, insanity, love, submission and vindication.

If you liked Rumor of War, or anything else Caputo has written, you will either love or hate it - probably his best writing ever.

As a VN era vet I was truly disappointed in this book. It did not compare with "A Rumor of War".

I have been a devoted fan of Mr Caputo since I read The Voyage years ago.... one of my all time favorite books. I've since read most of his other work and much of it has been excellent. Rumor of War, Acts of Faith, Crossers, Means of Escape. But this one was a real disappointment. A truly disjointed and haphazard work. It was so utterly boring at times I found myself frequently flipping ahead several pages to try to find some reason to stay with it. Initially I thought it felt like a rough draft of something - unfinished - but now I'm struggling to think of any redeeming qualities at all. The main character, Starkmann, is so pathetic - and not just after his tour in Vietnam either. Right from the start the guy is such a hopeless dolt. How Caputo thought he could hang an entire novel around this dullard is beyond me.