From Publishers Weekly
Harris's first novel is a moving, if helter-skelter, story of a doctor's attempts to reintegrate into normal life after a shattering tour of duty during the Vietnam War. Picking up in 1978 in bucolic Maine, ten years after the Tet Offensive Lily Townsend endured as a doctor in Vietnam and which still erupts in memories to torment her. Her outwardly staid life with her husband, Ben, the owner of a dry-cleaners, and their four-year-old son, Jaime, is undermined by a litany of panicked flashbacks and the lingering guilt Lily feels over the crackup of her former lover, Ian, a reporter for Reuters, and the disappearance of their friend, Bao-Long. Back stateside, Lily resists treatment for her post-trauma stress, and Ben grows increasingly concerned about his wife, who prefers to leave off the house lights, breaks out in hives and dives under a car when she hears a sudden sharp noise-putting Jaime in harm's way. Ben's affair with a family friend shocks Lily ("You're not really here," he accuses her), and his aggressive attempts to secure custody of their son isolates her. Harris's story is enormously affecting, although the thick layering of Lily's suffering both overwhelms and diffuses the power of this slender, uneven work.
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From Booklist
Still suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome some 10 years after her stint in Vietnam as a doctor, Lily finds herself overreacting to the sound of a car backfiring and the flickering fluorescent lights at the grocery store. Certain sensory details trigger a paralyzing fear, and she's suddenly back in a makeshift Vietnamese operating room, treating soldiers whose skin has been liquefied by napalm. In particular, she is haunted by the image of a dead child, who will suddenly materialize on her lawn or in her bedroom. Her increasingly impatient husband, worried about Lily's effect on their son, Jaime, abruptly leaves her for another woman and sues for full custody. Suddenly, the one role that has given Lily's life meaning may be taken from her, but Lily finds new reserves of courage in fighting back. In her intense debut novel, Harris describes the war dead and wounded with a delicacy of language that only makes the images more horrific. A distinctively styled novel that is especially notable for its unusual perspective on women in combat.
Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
