The Odyssey of Echo Company: The 1968 Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War

Actor Wilson’s sensitive reading heightens Stanton’s story of one soldier and his platoon during the brutal 1968 Tet Offensive. Stanley Parker, a typical American teenager, is spurred to join the Army in 1967 by a patriotic desire to serve his country and naive visions of battlefield glory. He and his fellow members of Echo Company arrive in-country and are plunged into the chaos of firefights, booby traps, and a relentless and elusive enemy. Parker is wounded three times; he eventually makes it home, but the trauma of war stays with him. Wilson brings a calm, world-weary spirit to his reading that effectively captures the disillusionment and emotional exhaustion of Parker’s time in Vietnam. His recounting of a child being killed by the Viet Cong for accepting a can of peaches from Parker and his resulting emotional breakdown is presented with heart-wrenching clarity, as are numerous scenes of death and destruction. Wilson ever so slightly picks up the pace and adds energy to recount Parker’s return to Vietnam in 2014, where he meets a former Viet Cong soldier at a site where the two fought against each other. It makes for a very moving ending to this intense war story. A Scribner hardcover. (Sept.)