Any Day Now

Long ago, Kate Buchanan and Nick Ricci were unlikely high school sweethearts -- a girl from one of the big houses on the boulevard and a boy who lived above his father's store -- until the day came when he left for war without saying goodbye. Now here he was again, standing in her Boston law office, calling her Katie and asking him to complete an unfinished mission from the conflict that tore them apart.


"Mixing romance, politics, and rejuvenated '60s idealism, Quinn (Alliances) concocts a stirring novel. Kate Buchanan, a criminal lawyer, is jolted when Nick Ricci -- her first love, and from the wrong side of the tracks -- appears in her office in 1985. They haven't seen each other since 1968, when he left for Vietnam without saying good-bye. He needs her help--he is convinced that his black war buddy Leon Jackson is alive, despite the burial of his remains by his family. Aided by another vet, Tom Wilcox, who is a minister to the homeless, and Kate's friend Deborah Tate, they interview other vets, including ex-POWs, and comb through government files. Kate confronts her own discomfort with the vets: "Their knowledge of Vietnam didn't come from two minutes of film on the evening news. They knew the taste, smell, and feel of it." The mysteries surrounding Leon and Nick's unwarranted guilt are too easily resolved here, but the lives of Nick, Kate, Tom, and Deborah dovetail into a fresh exposition of the vagaries of racism, war and love." -- Publisher's Weekly, Nov, 17, 1989.