A Quiet Cadence

Treanor’s immersive if sometimes leaden debut contains a Vietnam War veteran’s reflections on combat and coming home. Forty years after his time in the Marines, Marty McClure decides to set down his story for his children. He begins by flashing back to his first days in-country. Before long, his fellow soldiers becomes casualties, triggering VC booby trap after booby trap, which either kill them instantly or leave them horribly maimed. The repetitious nature of these sections packs a heavy wallop, though Treanor gives his readers little time to engage emotionally with the characters before their deaths. After McClure is wounded by a gunshot to the back and sent home, he struggles to adjust stateside. When McClure visits a friend at the University of Virginia, another student calls him a “baby killer,” and McClure feels a rush of anger, fueled by flashbacks of his friends’ deaths on the battlefield. He describes visits from “ghosts,” alluding to PTSD, and remarks on how his children might be surprised to learn of his years spent dreaming of violent revenge against the enemy soldiers. While the awkward prose fails to bring Treanor’s chronicle in league with the best Vietnam War fiction, his narrator holds the reader’s attention with consistent earnestness. This inspired treatment of a challenging chapter in U.S. history is worth a look. (June)