Message from Nam
A Novel
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4.4 • 75 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
As a journalist, Paxton Andrews would experience Vietnam firsthand. We follow her from high school in Savannah to college in Berkeley and then to work in Saigon.
For the soldiers she knew and met there, Viet Nam would change their lives in ways they could never have imagined. For the men in her life, Viet Nam would change their lives in ways hey could not escape or deny. Peter Wilson, fresh from law school, was a new recruit who would confont his fate in Da Nang. Ralph Johnson, a seasoned AP correspondent, had been in Saigon since the beginning. He knew Vietnam and the war inside out. Bill Quinn, captain of the Cu Chi tunnel rats, was on his fourth tour of duty and it seemed nothing could touch him. Sergeant Tony Campobello had come to Vietnam from the streets of New York to vent a rage that had followed him all the way to Saigon.
For seven years Paxton Andrews would write an acclaimed newspaper column from the front before finally returning to the States and then attending the Paris peace talks. But for her and the men who fought in Viet Nam, life would never be the same again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An audacious--and ill-conceived--departure from her usual glitzy settings, Steel's ( Daddy ; Star ) 25th novel focuses on the Vietnam War, though it merely skims the surface of that turbulent era. In an attempt at seriousness, Steel awkwardly shoehorns in a veritable almanac of historical facts and such painful milestones as the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. Her heroine, feisty Savannah native Paxton Andrews, disdains the role of a Southern belle and flees to UC Berkeley, where she pursues a journalism major and instantly falls in love with law student Peter Wilson, son of a newspaper tycoon. When Peter is killed in Vietnam, grief-stricken Paxton wangles a ticket to the front as a journalist, where, with an initial boost from a tough, fatherly AP correspondent, she knocks out an acclaimed column for seven years. Steel's undemanding style is too often marred by gushing, breathless prose that trivializes serious events. While the mega-selling author isn't at the top of her form, her fans will enjoy the emotional firestorm as Paxton reels from a series of tragic blows, some concerning her hotheaded lover, Sergeant Tony Campobello, a POW. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selections.
Customer Reviews
Message From Nam
Pulls on your heartstrings.
One of Danielle Steel’s best!
This book gave me a perspective I never had of the Vietnam Nam war and I less in my twenties during that time. I never understood it nor paid it much attention, just as the book said. I never protested; I just lived my life, safe and well in the U.S. It was a really good book…one of Danielle Steel’s best. I just thought it ended too soon and it was long; I wanted more, rather than just imagining the outcome of how they lived their lives afterwards. Please write a sequel!
One of her best..
One of her early books, well written, compelling story.