Coyote Jack: Drawing Meaning from Life and Vietnam–A Memoir

You carry who youare into war…andout of war. Coyote Jack overlays a fascinatingexposition of life and death inthe most enigmatic of Americanconflicts with an individual'sstruggle to free himself from thereal enemy that stands ready tothwart a full and authentic life.Through Jack we live in sandbagbunkers, bathe out of wells, anddodge booby traps as he learnsthe privations and landmines ofhis personal life are as complex asthe clashing cultures and divisivepolitics that created, and ended, the war in Vietnam. Some of the best war-stories come along decades after the fighting is done.Those years between the fighting and the writing give a man time to reflect onwhat the war meant for him, both in terms of who he was before, and of who hewas after. Coyote Jack tells three-of growing up with an abusive father, of going towar in Vietnam, and of returning to the scenes of the war years later; but they'rereally one story, of one life’s conflicts and resolutions-the universal story of how aboy became a man in war.This is a thoughtful, frank, honestly remembered book. I don’t know of any otherVietnam memoir that has got the gritty details of that grim war better, or has gonedeeper into the self that experienced it. - Samuel Hynes, Professor of English, Emeritus, Princeton University, author of The Soldiers’ Ta