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"A novel of revenge and redemption that tells us much about both where Vietnam is headed and where it has been.? Senator John McCain
Bantam
September 2002
On Sale: August 27, 2002
464 pages
ISBN: 0440240913
EAN: 9780440240914
Paperback (reprint)
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Fiction
Once in a great while there comes a novel of such emotional
impact and acute insight that it forever changes the way a
reader sees a nation or an era. Writing with an unerring
sense of suspense and of history experienced firsthand,
James Webb takes us on a myth-shattering cultural odyssey
deep into the heart of contemporary Vietnam, with a riveting
thriller that tells a love story — love for those who
perished, for family and friends, and between a soldier and
the land where he had always been ready to die. Brandon Condley survived five years of combat as a U.S.
Marine only to lose the woman he loved to an enemy assassin.
Now he is back in Vietnam, working to recover the remains of
unknown American soldiers. On a routine mission, Condley
finds a body that doesn’t match its dog tags — a body that
propels him into a vortex of violence and intrigue where
past and present become one. As the mystery of the dead man unravels, a link is revealed
to two well-known killers: “Salt and Pepper,” a pair of
treasonous Americans who led a deadly Viet Cong ambush
against Condley’s own men. Galvanized by a fresh trail to
these long-lost deserters, Condley has finally found a
purpose: Under the auspices of his government job, he is
going to hunt down the traitors. On his own, he is going to
kill them. Condley’s hunt cannot be kept secret from his former
enemies, or his friends. And in the shadows that linger from
Vietnam’s long season of darkness and terror, he has no way
of knowing which side is more dangerous. Surrounding him is an unforgettable cast of characters:
Dzung, Condley’s closest friend, a South Vietnamese war hero
who might have led his country if his side had won the war,
now reduced to driving a cyclo as his family starves in
Saigon’s District Four. Colonel Pham, a battle-hardened Viet
Cong soldier who lost three children to American bombs.
Manh, a cutthroat Interior Ministry official who blackmails
Dzung into a mission of murder. The Russian soldier Anatolie
Petrushinsky, who left his soul in Vietnam as his empire
collapsed around him. And the beautiful Van, Colonel Pham’s
daughter, who spurns the scars of war as she pursues her
dreams of freedom. As Condley stalks his elusive prey across old battlefields
and throughout Eurasia, returning always to the brooding
streets of Saigon, his mission — and the odds of his
surviving it — grow more precarious with each step he takes
toward the truth. Lost Soldiers captures the Vietnam of past and present — its
beauty and squalor, its politics and people. Propelled by a
page-turning mystery, shot through with adventure and
intrigue, it irrevocably transforms our view of that haunted
land and brings us as complete an understanding as we will
ever have of what happened after the war — and why. No
writer today is more qualified to take us into that world
than James Webb.
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