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Lost Soldiers, by James Webb
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Once in a great while there comes a novel of such emotional impact and acute insight that it forever changes the way a reader sees a nation or an era. Writing with an unerring sense of suspense and of history experienced firsthand, James Webb takes us on a myth-shattering cultural odyssey deep into the heart of contemporary Vietnam, with a riveting thriller that tells a love story — love for those who perished, for family and friends, and between a soldier and the land where he had always been ready to die.
Brandon Condley survived five years of combat as a U.S. Marine only to lose the woman he loved to an enemy assassin. Now he is back in Vietnam, working to recover the remains of unknown American soldiers. On a routine mission, Condley finds a body that doesn’t match its dog tags — a body that propels him into a vortex of violence and intrigue where past and present become one.
As the mystery of the dead man unravels, a link is revealed to two well-known killers: “Salt and Pepper,” a pair of treasonous Americans who led a deadly Viet Cong ambush against Condley’s own men. Galvanized by a fresh trail to these long-lost deserters, Condley has finally found a purpose: Under the auspices of his government job, he is going to hunt down the traitors. On his own, he is going to kill them.
Condley’s hunt cannot be kept secret from his former enemies, or his friends. And in the shadows that linger from Vietnam’s long season of darkness and terror, he has no way of knowing which side is more dangerous.
Surrounding him is an unforgettable cast of characters: Dzung, Condley’s closest friend, a South Vietnamese war hero who might have led his country if his side had won the war, now reduced to driving a cyclo as his family starves in Saigon’s District Four. Colonel Pham, a battle-hardened Viet Cong soldier who lost three children to American bombs. Manh, a cutthroat Interior Ministry official who blackmails Dzung into a mission of murder. The Russian soldier Anatolie Petrushinsky, who left his soul in Vietnam as his empire collapsed around him. And the beautiful Van, Colonel Pham’s daughter, who spurns the scars of war as she pursues her dreams of freedom.
As Condley stalks his elusive prey across old battlefields and throughout Eurasia, returning always to the brooding streets of Saigon, his mission — and the odds of his surviving it — grow more precarious with each step he takes toward the truth.
Lost Soldiers captures the Vietnam of past and present — its beauty and squalor, its politics and people. Propelled by a page-turning mystery, shot through with adventure and intrigue, it irrevocably transforms our view of that haunted land and brings us as complete an understanding as we will ever have of what happened after the war — and why. No writer today is more qualified to take us into that world than James Webb.
From the Hardcover edition.
- Sales Rank: #27669 in eBooks
- Published on: 2002-08-27
- Released on: 2002-08-27
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
Webb's cultural and political portrayal of Vietnam 25 years after the war's end is delivered with such bold strokes and magical detail that it really doesn't matter that the plot itself is relegated to the backseat. This is a highly personal and empathetic look at today's Vietnam, a land of misery and inequity, yet one still vibrantly alive. The story follows the experiences of Brandon Condley, an ex-Marine whose job it is to find missing American soldiers, dead or alive. Condley is trying to track down Theodore Deville, an army grunt who not only deserted his unit in 1969 and killed a fellow serviceman, but then joined the ranks of the enemy. Condley is convinced Deville is still alive, operating somewhere in southeast Asia's underground economy. Webb introduces a rich cast of supporting characters as Condley pursues his quarry across Vietnam, Australia, the former Soviet Union and Thailand. Among the most delicately etched is Dzung, a former South Vietnamese officer now relegated, like thousands of others on the losing side, to a menial station in life, one that he and his family have no hope of escaping. Such characters, as well as the highly textured mood and atmosphere that Webb creates, tend to further eclipse the main narrative and shift the focus to the moral consequences and social fallout of the war. This detailed, lovingly drawn portrait of Vietnam reveals a sad, tortured country that has never recovered from the horrifying events of a quarter-century ago. Major print and radio advertising. (Sept. 4)Forecast: Webb (Fields of Fire) is no stranger to the bestseller lists; endorsements from heavy hitters like Sen. John McCain will help put him there once again.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Some of the memories were horrible. A few of them were good. But all of them had meaning. Thus begins a gripping tale of mystery and intrigue set in present-day Vietnam. The center of this fine novel is the search for two army deserters who led U.S. troops into ambush and then hid in North Vietnam after the hostilities ceased. Like the best of such tales, however, the novel offers more than the resolution of a mystery: it also tells a poignant story of a love that might have been and of friendship across partisan lines and is rich with the sounds and smells of its foreign setting. Former Secretary of the Navy and Assistant Secretary of Defense Webb (also the author of the best-selling Fields of Fire and other novels) has used his familiarity with the Far East to evoke the tangled net of loyalties and enmities bequeathed to a troubled country by a savage history of conflict. This exceptionally well-written book tells a gripping tale; enthusiastically recommended.
-David Keymer, Zayed Univ., Dubai
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
At the end of the Vietnam War, the victors threw a bamboo curtain around South Vietnam. It remained essentially closed to the rest of the world for 15 years while government, society, and culture were recast--and those who fought on the losing side were "reeducated." In Webb's sixth novel, the reopening of Vietnam allows Brandon Condley to return to the steamy, impoverished, maddeningly contradictory country he came to love while a Marine officer. He now works as a liaison between the Vietnamese government and the U.S. agency attempting to recover and identify the remains of MIAs. A body unearthed in a tiny highland village puts Condley on the 34yearold trail of a deserter who led a deadly ambush of his platoon. Finding and killing that traitor becomes Condley's reason for being. This gripping tale is a page-turner, but it is also much more: a compelling, insightful, and beautiful portrait of a fascinating place, as well as a moving saga of revenge, love, loyalty, honor, and, ultimately, redemption. Despite its tragic themes, the novel is an affirmation of life. Thomas Gaughan
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A Good Taut Novel
By C E Voigtsberger Jr
A good suspenseful novel by a polished author, James Webb. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel of Vietnam. I'm ten years older than Webb and had finished my required military duty by the time Vietnam heated up, although in the Marine Reserves we were talking about being involved in Vietnam as early as 1962. I remember at one briefing I inquired of the major presenting the briefing why we didn't let the Commies have the country because in ten years they would be welcoming us back. He replied that I didn't understand the situation. Perhaps I understood it far better than he. I would have stayed in the active reserves except that I could see another Korea looming on the horizon and I didn't want to be involved in another situation like Korea.
Webb apparently has immersed himself in Vietnamese culture and appreciates the fine nuances of their society, especially the division that the war created there. I enjoyed his explanations of Vietnamese life. Besides being a finely detailed picture of life in Vietnam in the 90s, it is also a good description of the work being carried on by the teams who recover and identify U.S. service personnel remains in combat zones. The added fillip of drug trafficking during and after our official involvement in Vietnam added a dash of spice to the novel. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and hope that Webb continues his writing career. I wish he were running for president. He would have my vote.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
and was sad when I finished it
By Jumper42
Having read none of James Webb's work previously, with the completion of "Lost Soldiers", I am a convert, and will seek out other titles of his. This was one of the most powerful and insightful books I have ever read - and I have been a lifelong voracious reader. For me, "Lost Soldiers" defies categorization...but on all it's levels, I could not put it down, and was sad when I finished it. Thank you, Mr Webb. This story made a profound impact on me, and I will be chewing on it for quite some time to come!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Mini-Review of "Lost Soldiers"
By Alan L. Chase
Once I find an author whose work I really appreciate, I will often read several works by that writer in succession. I have been on a James Webb kick of late, so here is another mini-review of a Webb novel. "Lost Soldiers," written in 2001, continues Webb's life-long process of coming to grips with what happened to him and other Marines and soldiers in Viet Nam.
The protagonist, Brandon Condley, never really left Viet Nam - at least not emotionally. In this novel, Condley works on behalf of the teams that are tasked with identifying the bodies of those who were KIA and whose remains are finally being turned over by the government of Viet Nam. This is a complex tale of promises made and broken - on a personal level and on a trans-national level. The characters in this book together provide a window into the aftermath of the Viet Nam war. The tale is told with intricate and intimate writing. I often felt that I had been transported to Viet Nam as the author wove a web of intrigue and stunning details - sounds, smells, and sights of the mysterious Southeast Asian nation that has captivated the imagination of America for so many decades.
Here are some samples of Webb's superb writing:
"Brandon Condley loved Sai Gon. It was the museum of his own heart, a tortured and yet insistently happy city where along the streets his memories could once again race and dive amid the fecund ferment, the mangled but sly-eyed beggars, the crumbling old French buildings now conquered and abused, the rivers muddy and eternal, the toothless cyclo drivers suborning him from the roadsides, the motorbikes loud and reckless, begging for the future, the never-ending stares, the measuring smiles, welcoming and wary, the con games of bright minds trapped inside dumb lives, the odd, funky food cooked on the streets, the black puddles on the sidewalks, wet from rain and urine and wash water thrown out of doorways, the stench of all that mixed together. In all an instant beauty, pushing up through the muck of a fierce and dreadful past like Buddha's lotus, a beauty just as real as what his own past might have become, always pushing, insistent as a weed, fresh as the future." (Page 40)
Reading this paragraph makes me wish I could paint a picture with words as skillfully as Webb is able to do. Here is another passage that sets the scene for two warriors - one American and one Vietnamese - taking the measure of one another:
"Colonel Pham's formality was to be expected. Perhaps fifteen years older than Condley, the former Viet Cong soldier was rarely emotional in public and almost deceptively nondescript. Condley had learned tat the colonel's controlled emotions were a camouflage that hid the kind of man whom in Asia too many Americans overlooked at their peril, and usually to their later regret. The colonel's teeth were stained from years of strong tobacco and poor dental hygiene. His glasses looked as if they had been bought forty years before. Several long strands of hair grew from a mole on his chin, just to the right of his mouth. His small, paw-like hands hung slightly in front of his thighs, as if he had spent so many years carrying weight on his back - pack and weapon and rice roll - that his shoulders and fingers were permanently curved. And he clearly did not belong in a suit. He wore it loosely and messily, the collar too big, the knot on the tie too fat, the shirtsleeves too long, making him appear ungainly and even more diminutive than he actually was.
But from the first, Condley had picked up a sureness in the older man, a toughness that those who had not fought the war could never fully penetrate. Pham had made hard decisions, of the sort a mere businessman could never conceive. He had endured years in the jungle, conquering it and making it his friend. He had ordered soldiers to their death. He had killed people. And form the measuring look he and Condley had always exchanged behind their smiles, it was clear that Pham had killed Americans.
Condley knew that Pham had always read his own face just as quickly. Yes, their eyes said to each other every time they met, we both endured and we both killed. But that was then, and this is now. So where do we go from here? In a way this knowledge gladdened both of them, giving them an odd but unbreakable bond. He and Pham shared a secret kinship. They knew the truth of the battlefield, a conviction so real and permeable that neither of them would ever need to mention it to the other." (Pages 55-6)
Webb shines the light of personal experience and understanding on the arcane fraternity of those who have fought wars and strive to make peace with that reality. Add this to your list of books well worth reading.
Enjoy.
Al
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