Gordon's Review

Gordon Ely, who wrote for the Richmond Times Dispatch and Billboard for nearly two decades, has written this e-mail to me. He has given me permission to share it.

Dear Evie,
This is a tremendously courageous book. The craftsmanship is impeccable. The tone and pace is pitch-perfect. Your commentary...the "thread" that ties it together with facts, opinions and deep emotion...is perfectly placed. Donn's letters paint the day-to-day drudgery, and sheer irony and banality of war, with no intent of literary style-- in a way that becomes the most powerful style of all: The voice of the writer. Quite amazingly, your voice not only does as well, but the two merge; almost like a conversation between the living and the dead, in the present tense and the past tense, until all sense of "tense" and linear time is suspended.

I have read so much about Vietnam, but this is the first time I've felt someone telling me about it. The need to diminish more and more of oneself-- just to survive the horror that's all around-- while also groping to hang onto humanity, when humanity is becoming more and more a memory.

I watched closely throughout to follow how being in a "hot," ugly war affected him (without much knowledge or preconception that it had). You "steered me through," precisely when and as I wanted and needed, with perfect feel for what the reader required from you in order to better understand Donn, and you, and that war, and any war. How dehumanizing "the enemy" (on both sides) becomes a survival skill. And when the referees blow the whistle, you go back to "civility." The preciousness of "home" (crunchy peanut butter), and the indifference-- even sport-- of killing. I've never seen or read the irony of war depicted better.

And he was happiest when he was on the move, and in the action. Finally the sense of possible redemption in "fighting to win," not just "being there." It's the love that pervades everything that keeps him human to the reader. I read it with the strangest feeling--toward the end-- and I don't think I could compliment you more than this. I knew what was coming, but I kept counting the days, thinking to myself, "Come on, Donn! Get the FUCK out of there! DEMAND that r&r! Look out! Over there! No, over there! Don't go up that hill!" I was rooting for him, as if I just read it ten more times, maybe it would finally end differently.

But he had to go up that hill. Had it all changed him into some person you didn't know? I really think not. If it wasn't presumptuous of me to tell you, I'd say I know not. And if we figured out answers to any of this, we'd have figured out what no one else before us has.

I have read a great deal of history about Vietnam.

I've never cried over it until now.

Thanks and love,
Gordon