A Dangerous Country: An American Elegy

Born on the Fourth of July author Kovic returns to his traumatic experiences during the Vietnam War for this searing memoir. The first section consists of entries from a previously unpublished diary Kovic kept during his deployment. In them, he traces his dawning moral objection to the war and his struggles to overcome the guilt and pain it caused him. Early entries about afternoons just before deployment spent watching The Dirty Dozen quickly give way to harrowing accounts of Kovic’s unit shooting Vietnamese women and children by mistake, and the author’s own accidental killing of a colleague whom he mistook for the enemy. The diary entries are followed by more straightforward memoir sections that catalog Kovic’s efforts to rebuild his life when he returned to the U.S., paralyzed from the waist down and tormented by depression and suicidal thoughts. Ultimately, he came to regard his paralyzed body as both “a living reminder of the war” and something that enabled him to become “a messenger, a living symbol, a man who learned to embrace all men and women as my brothers and sisters.” While Kovic covers familiar territory, he does so with immediacy and bracing candor. Even those acquainted with the author’s story will find this fascinating. (Feb.)