Literary

Title: Traces of a Lost War
Author: Richard Barone
Genre: Fiction, Literary
Reviewer: John Cathcart

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0975471120

During the height of the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army resorted to a bait-and-switch scam that recruited thousands of unsuspecting college graduates into its combat ranks. This is the story of two of its victims--Drew and Eliot--who join the Army to become signal officers but instead are reassigned to the infantry, a misfortune that treats their beloved diplomas as one-way tickets to the jungles of Vietnam. Finding uncertainty in a certain war, they manage to avoid the most dreadful duty--point man in an infantry company. Their misadventures--Drew lugging a 25-pound radio on his back, and Eliot writing military propaganda in Saigon--lead them down different paths, one becoming a war hero, the other a casualty of war. Written from a diversity of perspectives--fictional, historical, and autobiographical--this book is about survival, not only on the battlefield, but in the mind of an artist caught between his pursuit of a masterpiece and his allegiance to the men fighting to stay alive.