Kent Anderson's stunning debut novel is a modern classic, a harrowing, authentic picture of one American soldier's experience of the Vietnam War—"unlike anything else in war literature" (Los Angeles Review of Books).Hanson joins the Green Berets fresh out of college. Carrying a volume of Yeats's poems in his uniform pocket, he has no idea of what he's about to face in Vietnam—from the enemy, from his fellow soldiers, or within himself. In vivid, nightmarish, and finely etched prose, Kent Anderson takes us through Hanson's two tours of duty and a bitter, ill-fated return to civilian life in-between, capturing the day-to-day process of war like no writer before or since.

TOP 10 MYSTERIES & THRILLERS FOR SPRING —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY "One of the unsung heroes of crime fiction" (Chicago Tribune), Kent Anderson returns after two decades with this dazzling novel about justice, character and fate, set against the backdrop of an American city at war with itself.Oakland, California, 1983: a city churning with violent crime and racial conflict. Officer Hanson, a Vietnam veteran, has abandoned academia for the life-and-death clarity of police work, a way to live with the demons that followed him home from the war. But Hanson knows that justice requires more than simply enforcing the penal code. He believes in becoming a part of the community he serves—which is why, unlike most officers, he chooses to live in the same town where he works. This strategy serves him well...to a point. He forges a precarious feiendship wil Felix Maxwell, the drug king of East Oakland, based o ntheir shared sense of...