Today's featured author is Marc Liebman. His unapologetic yet humble narrative style captivated me a few years ago. I wanted to share my thoughts about one of his recent novels titled very bluntly Forgotten.
The novel is a story about treason, drug trade, greed, sex as well as dogged determination to survive.
Treason because an American POWs became a collaborator and only one of the Forgotten witnesses the crime. The drug lord holding the Americans allowed his unit to be captured in return for a commission in the North Vietnamese Army.
The Americans are forced to turn raw opium into heroin while the drug lord masquerading as a North Vietnamese Army officer waits for when the time is right to ransom the Americans for two million apiece.
To spice up the action, the wife of one of the POWs is an anti-war activist and over the course of time, Janet Pulaski becomes what one reviewer called a "badass, lesbian, nymphomaniac assassin." To her employers, Janet Pulaski is known as "The RedStar of Death."
For nine long years, the Forgotten endure captivity and after they are rescued,two Americans, one the head of the CIA's POW/MIA desk and the other a former POWwant them dead. The CIA officer is afraid an investigation will expose his relationship with the Cubans and send him to jailor worse. The former POW knows if Randy Pulaski tells what he knows, he could wind up at the end of a hangman's rope.
My thoughts
"Forgotten" is one of Marc Liebman's longest novels, close to 600 pages, but you don't feel burdened or bored, thanks to the snappy, sometime jerky pace that fits the content so well. If you are familiar with Liebman's work, he is a real man's man, and his fiction is hypermasculine - in the best sense possible. Think a more eloquent, more elaborate version of Hemingway. The Vietnam war will continue being a controversial subject. Having been through a few more controversial military campaigns in the past few decades, American can step back and re-evaluate our experience in Vietnam. It's so important for us a American citizens, readers, critical thinkers, to step back and refrain from judgment, and try to see the situation from each character's point of view. As with most of Liebman's novels, it helps to understand the military jargon. For instance, if you've never seen an A-7B Corsair, you should google it. What is second nature to an author who has firsthand experience with the military may not be so to an average lay reader. So being able to visualize various aircraft models referenced in the novel will be useful. You can expect graphic, highly technical, cinematic battle scenes as well as crude, unceremonious sex scenes. So if you are a man who is into military history, or a woman in touch with her masculine side (like myself), this novel is a perfect treat for you.
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