Indian Country [Import] [Hardcover]

Philip CAPUTO (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Books; First Edition edition (1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0712616578
• ISBN-13: 978-0712616577
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Novelist and journalist Philip Caputo (1941 -- ) was born in Chicago and educated at Purdue and Loyola Universities. After graduating in 1964, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps for three years, including a 16-month tour of duty in Vietnam. He has written 14 books, including two memoirs, four books of general nonfiction, and eight novels. His acclaimed memoir of Vietnam, A Rumor of War, has been published in 15 languages, has sold over 1.5 million copies since its publication in 1977, and is widely regarded as a classic in the literature of war. His most recent novel, Crossers, is set against a backdrop of drug and illegal-immigrant smuggling on the Mexican border and is to be published in the Fall of 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf. In addition to books, Caputo has published dozens of major magazine articles, reviews, and op-ed pieces in publications ranging from the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post to Esquire, National Geographic, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. Topics included profiles of novelist William Styron and actor Robert Redford, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the turmoil on the Mexican border.

Caputo's professional writing career began in 1968, when he joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune, serving as a general assignment and team investigative reporter until 1972. For the next five years, he was a foreign correspondent for that newspaper, stationed in Rome, Beirut, Saigon, and Moscow. In 1977, he left the paper to devote himself to writing books and magazine articles.


Caputo has won 10 journalistic and literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 (shared for team investigative reporting on vote fraud in Chicago), the Overseas Press Club Award in 1973, the Sidney Hillman Foundation award in 1977 (for A Rumor of War), the Connecticut Book Award in 2006, and the Literary Lights Award in 2007. His first novel, Horn of Africa, was a National Book Award finalist in 1980, and his 2007 essay on illegal immigration won the Blackford Prize for nonfiction from the University of Virginia.

He and his wife, Leslie Ware, an editor for Consumer Reports magazine, divide their time between Connecticut and Arizona. Caputo has two sons from a previous marriage, Geoffrey, a jazz composer and music teacher, and Marc, a political reporter for the Miami Herald.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A journey, November 19, 2001

By 

Mr. R. Lawrence "Rog42" (West Pennant Hills, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Indian Country: A Novel (Paperback)

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!

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A deeply moving, wonderful book, October 4, 2001

By 

Don M Howard "Don M. Howard" (Rimrock, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Indian Country (Hardcover)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Back from Darkness, August 30, 2011

By 

Ohioan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Indian Country (Paperback)

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.