Ruby Sisson Library

In the tradition of Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" and James Jones's "The Thin Red Line," Marlantes tells the powerful and compelling story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood.

The monsoon winds swirling up from the South China Sea had doubled in magnitude as Marine Staff Sergeant Mike Sullivan stood on the roof of the American Embassy, watching North Vietnamese artillery pound Saigon's airport. It was late in the afternoon of April 29, 1975, and for the past eight days the airstrip had been the busiest in the world as flight after flight of United States cargo planes ferried Vietnamese refugees, American civilians, and...

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these unexpected words, it is a revelation. Raised on idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different choice for her life. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she impulsively joins the...

Tony Hillerman's bestselling Navajo mysteries have thrilled millions of readers with their taut, intricate plotting, sensitive, subtle characterizations and lyrical evocations of landscapes and cultures. Now he departs his trademark terrain and applies his talents to a story he has wanted to tell for decades about an ordinary man thrust into total chaos.Until the telephone call came for him on April 12, 1975, the world of Moon Mathias had settled...

Lt. Col. Hal Moore is the commander of the First Battalion, Seventh Cavalry. As part of the Pleiku Campaign of late 1965, Moore is assigned to action at Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley, an area known to be overrun by North Vietnamese troops and nicknamed "The Valley of Death." Moore soon finds himself and his men contained to an area about the size of a football field, surrounded by more than 2,000 enemy troops and engaged in the first major...

"The year is 1975. Elle Sheen--a single mother who is supporting herself and her six-year-old, African-American son, Dylan, as a waitress at the Noel Street Diner--isn't sure what to make of William Smith when his appearance creates a stir in the small town of Mistletoe, Utah. As their lives unexpectedly entwine, Elle learns that William, a recently returned Vietnam POW, is not only fighting demons from his past, but may also have the answer to her...

This work depicts the heroic young men of Alpha Company as they carry the emotional weight of their lives to war in Vietnam in a patchwork account of a modern journey into the heart of darkness. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they...

The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and of course, the character Tim O'Brien who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss...

An untold Cold War story: how the CIA tried to infiltrate a radical group of U.S. military deserters, a tale that leads from a bizarre political cult to the heart of the Washington establishmentStockholm, 1968. A thousand American deserters and draft-resisters are arriving to escape the war in Vietnam. Theyre young, theyre radical, and they want to start a revolution. Some of them even want to take the fight to America. The Swedes treat them like...

Virgil Flowers is only in his late 30s, but he's been around the block a few times, and he doesn't think much can surprise him. He's about to be proved wrong. On a hot, humid summer night in Minnesota, Flowers is in bed with one of his ex-wives when the phone rings. It's Lucas Davenport. There's a body near a veteran's memorial in Stillwater with two shots to the head. The victim has a lemon in his mouth, exactly like the body they found a week ago....