Chained Eagle

Navy Lieutenant Alvarez, a pilot, was shot down over North Vietnam in 1964 and held prisoner until 1973. In this engrossing account of the experience written with freelancer Pitch, he emerges as a duty-bound officer who held fast to his religious faith and ``the values enshrined in the Constitution.'' The book is a top-drawer POW memoir, but what sets it apart is its unblinking concurrent narration of the Alvarez family's ordeal. His sister became an antiwar activist, and Alvarez's discovery of this had a demoralizing effect. A more severe psychological crisis revolved around the coldness of his wife's letters, a situation that reached its climax when she divorced him for another man. Alvarez's anguished response to the news amid dreadful physical conditions, and the manifest kindness of his comrades in captivity, is movingly told. In an upbeat conclusion, the prisoner's release is joyously described. Military Book Club main selection. (Nov.)