American Blood
A Novel
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Michael Smith survives the Vietnam war only to find himself angry and adrift in a United States at war with itself. Though he cannot forget the pornographic atrocities he witnessed abroad, it is the pervasive brutality of civilian life that threatens to destroy him until he lands in a tormented yet life-saving relationship. First published in 1987 and now available to a new generation of readers, this disturbing novel foreshadows twenty-first-century headlines that feature assault rifles and mass murders. American Blood is a timely and fiercely moral statement on violence and loss.
“One of the most intense anti-war books since The Red Badge of Courage.”—Rocky Mountain News
“An auspicious literary event. . . . The America he describes, the nation bathed in blood, the people who keep loaded guns by their pillows, are more real here than in the news . . . yet it leaves us with wisdom and hope.”—Ray Mungo, San Francisco Chronicle
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With the cynical conviction that his purpose as a grunt in Vietnam was "to mutilate people and landscape as thoroughly and as horribly as possible,'' Michael Smith returns to the U.S. a sociopath, unable to shuck off his murderous state of mind. Nichols (The Magic Journey has written a straightforward and jitters-inducing account of the seemingly permanent effects of war upon the character and future life of a veteran whose terrible memories charge him with a desire to murder and humiliate again. A significant addition to the literature on the Vietnam conflict, the novel approaches a moving serenity with Smith's unexpected progress toward adjustment and love in a New Mexican town. At that midway point, however, the narrative goes awry. Its propelling madness gone, it expresses renewed outrage without convincing spirit, since Nichols cannot add more wisdom about violence, grief, revenge and redemption to what has already been said. It's an unfortunate loss of purpose, for the book's first half is a tour de force.
