This extraordinary Vietnam war novel is something like Apocalypse Now on paper – sometimes taut, sometimes rambling, often unhinged. The characters include novice CIA man Skip Sands; his Kurtz-like uncle; two brothers who serve their country then wander back home to Arizona, angry and bored; two Vietnamese soldiers, one from the north, one from the south; an intelligence officer named Storm; and a Canadian Seventh-Day Adventist aid worker. An astounding vision of human folly amidst the chaos of war; delivering gritty, sympathetic portraits of men and women desperate for an end to their loneliness, whether in sex or death or by the grace of God.