Valley of the Shadow [Mass Market Paperback]

Franklin Allen Leib (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 23, 1992

Douglas Moser is convinced that Lt. William Stuart is dead, but when he learns that his friend is in fact a POW in Laos, he recruits an elite SEAL team to rescue him. Reprint. K. PW.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Leib's ( Fire Dream ) second novel featuring Navy lieutenant William Stuart again demonstrates his ability to write superior Vietnam war fiction. Gunner's mate Douglas MacArthur Moser, believed dead, is actually a POW, held with a number of other Americans in vile conditions in a jungle camp in Laos. Through the Red Cross, Moser sends a letter to his mother in Georgia, and in it mentions the name of his hero, Lt. Stuart. Apprised of Moser's situation, Stuart commits himself to rescue his former gunner's mate; deciphering the clues in Moser's message, he ascertains the POW's general whereabouts and lobbies for permission to launch a rescue mission. In building dramatic momentum, Leib effectively juxtaposes stateside political and military machinations with the brutalities of war and captivity. It will not diminish the reader's involvement to reveal that Stuart ultimately locates Moser--for that is only half the story. Paralleling the conflict itself, this is a novel of many heroes--and many more victims. Leib, who himself served as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam, shows how the stark and tragic realities of war can be most powerfully conveyed in fiction.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This is the sequel to Fire Dream (Presidio Pr., 1990). Douglas Moser is a prisoner in a North Vietnamese labor camp. He manages to get word of his location to his former commander, Lieutenant Stuart, now in Washington, who overcomes bureaucratic and political resistance and mounts a rescue attempt. The shackled Moser and the grievously crippled camp commandant mystically identify with one another, each seeing themselves in the other and expecting his own death to be related to the other. Sketchy subplots involve a beautiful French-Vietnamese spy and some heavy-handed material about antiwar protesters aiding the enemy. Only for the most determined reader of war stories.
- Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army TRALINET Ctr., Fort Monroe, Va.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 307 pages
• Publisher: Ivy Books (August 23, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804109974
• ISBN-13: 978-0804109970
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #120,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars War IS hell.......through the eyes of a soldier, September 16, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Valley of the Shadow (Hardcover)

When read with it predecessor, Liebs "The Fire Dream", this book provides the best of worst of the Vietnam War in a moving account of the life of a soldier as seen through the eyes of a man who wants to live and let live yet is forced to kill.
I have never read a more realistic account of what it was like to be there and am doubtful that I ever will.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vietnam, January 10, 2001

By 

David A. Spearman (Harbor Beach, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Valley of the Shadow (Mass Market Paperback)

This is my second book by Mr. Leib. I find him to be a great author and holds not only the war,but America in context of the 60's. There is no doubt to any of us that lived through that era that the war, the country, and our people were surely at risk. America as we knew it had to change and luckily it did. Let us hope that history will not repeat that era. I will read all his books as his insight is great.