Fatal Light: A Novel (Contemporary American Fiction) - Softcover

Once in country, the soldier goes on rescue missions (which often involve picking up more dead than wounded), smokes pot, tries to cope with the dense air, elephant grass, monkeys' screams--and not focus on the killing. He encloses a photo with a letter to Mary and points out that the bulge in his pocket is a paperback of Emily Dickinson: "Such things live together here, poetry and shotguns." Richard Currey writes in that same mixture of violence and lyricism, because for his soldier Vietnam is a place of cruel extremes. Next to a spot where bodies are piled, "the sun was dropping in an elegant fog of muted roses that I might call lovely if I though my feelings were intact," he later tells his girlfriend.

Discharge brings the difficulty of resuming life. Attempting to describe his experience, he brings up one of the more palatable names for Vietnam--"a world of hurt." Fatal Light is an achingly poetic re-creation of an ugly history.