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The Return: A Novel of Vietnam
When LCDR Pete Brauer, former U.S. Navy SEAL (retired), dies in Florida, he dies clutching in his hands the portrait of a beautiful French-Vietnamese girl that has hung on his wall for more than twenty years.
“I will never forgive myself, Pollack,” Brauer told his neighbor and friend, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jack Kazmarek (retired). “I don’t think God will either.”
“We’ve all done things,” Kazmarek replied. “Especially in Vietnam.”
“We haven’t all done what I done.”
After Pete’s death, Kazmarek sets out on a quest to discover the relationship between Pete and the Eurasian girl in the photograph, Mhai, and to lay to rest the demons which haunted his friend throughout his life. The quest leads him back to Vietnam, a return that many combat veterans of Vietnam are making to old battlefields and old memories.
In the process of uncovering details of the romance between a Navy SEAL fighting in the Mekong Delta and the beautiful enemy he wounds and captures, Kazmarek must confront personal demons that he has also attempted to suppress since TET 1968 and the fighting that erupted around the VC village of Vain Tho. Although their paths had not crossed in Vietnam, the Navy SEAL Brauer and the army infantry platoon leader Kazmarek had fought in the same area of operations, against the same warlord of the Delta, the mysterious Commander Minh.
Kazmarek finds himself re-living old nightmares of the horrors of war in Vietnam. Drawn inexorably back to Vain Tho and to what occurred there over three decades previously, he finds that his path and Pete’s must have crossed after all--in Vain Tho during a battle in which both men had “done things.” He finds himself not only confronting the past, but also reenacting it when Commander Minh, now also an old man, emerges to even the score.
“I will never forgive myself, Pollack,” Brauer told his neighbor and friend, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jack Kazmarek (retired). “I don’t think God will either.”
“We’ve all done things,” Kazmarek replied. “Especially in Vietnam.”
“We haven’t all done what I done.”
After Pete’s death, Kazmarek sets out on a quest to discover the relationship between Pete and the Eurasian girl in the photograph, Mhai, and to lay to rest the demons which haunted his friend throughout his life. The quest leads him back to Vietnam, a return that many combat veterans of Vietnam are making to old battlefields and old memories.
In the process of uncovering details of the romance between a Navy SEAL fighting in the Mekong Delta and the beautiful enemy he wounds and captures, Kazmarek must confront personal demons that he has also attempted to suppress since TET 1968 and the fighting that erupted around the VC village of Vain Tho. Although their paths had not crossed in Vietnam, the Navy SEAL Brauer and the army infantry platoon leader Kazmarek had fought in the same area of operations, against the same warlord of the Delta, the mysterious Commander Minh.
Kazmarek finds himself re-living old nightmares of the horrors of war in Vietnam. Drawn inexorably back to Vain Tho and to what occurred there over three decades previously, he finds that his path and Pete’s must have crossed after all--in Vain Tho during a battle in which both men had “done things.” He finds himself not only confronting the past, but also reenacting it when Commander Minh, now also an old man, emerges to even the score.
- GenresFiction
ebook
First published March 1, 2001
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About the author
Charles W. Sasser
61 books59 followersCharles W. Sasser has been a full-time freelance writer/journalist/photographer since 1979. He is a veteran of both the U.S. Navy (journalist) and U.S. Army (Special Forces, the Green Berets), a combat veteran and former combat correspondent wounded in action. He also served fourteen years as a police officer (in Miami, Florida, and in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he was a homicide detective). He has taught at universities, lectured nationwide, and traveled extensively throughout the world. He has published over 2,500 articles and short stories in magazines ranging from Guideposts, Parents and Christian Life to Soldier of Fortune, True West, and Writer's Digest. He is author, co-author or contributing author of more than 30 books and novels.
As an adventurer, Sasser has, at various times: solo-canoed across the Yukon; sailed the Caribbean; motorbiked across the continent; rode camels in the Egyptian desert; floated the Amazon River; dived for pirate treasure; rode horses across Alaska; motorcycled Europe; climbed Mount Rainier; ran with the bulls in Spain; chased wild mustangs...
He has been a professional rodeo clown and bronc rider; professional kickboxer; sky diver and SCUBA diver; college professor; newspaperman; archaeologist/anthropologist...
Sasser now lives on a ranch in Chouteau, Oklahoma with wife Donna where he is a writer, rancher, and businessman who trains horses and team ropes. He also has a private pilot's license and is an ultralite aircraft Certified Flight Instructor.
As an adventurer, Sasser has, at various times: solo-canoed across the Yukon; sailed the Caribbean; motorbiked across the continent; rode camels in the Egyptian desert; floated the Amazon River; dived for pirate treasure; rode horses across Alaska; motorcycled Europe; climbed Mount Rainier; ran with the bulls in Spain; chased wild mustangs...
He has been a professional rodeo clown and bronc rider; professional kickboxer; sky diver and SCUBA diver; college professor; newspaperman; archaeologist/anthropologist...
Sasser now lives on a ranch in Chouteau, Oklahoma with wife Donna where he is a writer, rancher, and businessman who trains horses and team ropes. He also has a private pilot's license and is an ultralite aircraft Certified Flight Instructor.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 3, 2014
I've read a couple of Sasser's autobiographical works, as well as 100th Kill--his other Vietnam novel. While I appreciate his perspective (he's a vet of the Special Forces Reserves, an author and a rancher, among other things), I've always found his writing to be competent, but not stellar. By his own admission he is not the most talented writer...but he is hard-working at his craft (if any of you remember the paramilitary magazines of the '80s competing with Soldier Of Fortune, he wrote many articles for them). So I wasn't quite prepared for the caliber of this novel.
The Return is one fine work of fiction--probably Sasser's best, though I haven't read all his books to state that emperically.
The narrator is Jack Kazmarek, a widower with miriad health problems on top of his PTSD. For many years he has been neighbors with another Vietnam vet, Pete Brauer. Both of them were mustang officers--having taken their lumps as enlisted men prior to being commissioned. Kazmarek was a platoon leader in the 9th Infantry, while Brauer had been a Navy SEAL. Although both of them spent a tour in the same AO during the same time, they never met until retiring in the same Florida trailer park decades later.
The story opens on the loss of Kazmarek's closest friend. Pete dies alone in his trailer, clutching a photo of a beautiful French-Vietnamese woman. Jack has noticed the portrait in his friend's house over the years (even finding her face familiar), but Pete rarely talked about it. His only mention of the woman in the image was cryptic: "May God forgive me."
Jack is almost as intrigued as I was. Eventually he begins investigating, to find out who the woman was and where she might be now. The investigation leads Jack back to Vietnam where he must confront some of his own long-buried demons.
The story is filled in with flashbacks--some of Jack's own, but most by the people who remembered Pete and Mhai (the woman in the photo). All the reader's curiosity is satisfied by the end, as we learn just how extensively Jack and Pete crossed each others' paths during that insane conflict.
Sasser is not your typical war novelist who portrays American involvement in Indochina as one huge Mai-Lai massacre. And yet he does depict atrocities committed by Americans. And there is surprising depth to all the main characters, including the Viet Cong, who are treated as even-handedly as any reasonable person could hope for. Sasser's Vietnam is not black or white, but a convoluted, maddening mess of grays. Perhaps the Cong sympathizers (which comprise most of our government, media and education establishments) would even enjoy how, in the novel, US forces suffer a significant tactical defeat--something that didn't happen but makes the VC seem more heroic in retrospect. Everyone conveniently forgets that failure to achieve victory in Vietnam was mandated by the very government that put Americans in harm's way to begin with. The VC and NVA didn't defeat the US military--the "war" was lost in the Oval Office.
There are a few plot twists Sasser has in store, and I didn't deduce all of them beforehand correctly. Characters are complex and believable. Narrator Jack Kazmarek has political opinions, but the story "he" tells lets the chips fall where they may, regardless of who it may please or offend (in fact, it reminds me somewhat of The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna). There's enough action and conflict to keep you turning pages, and even a few tugs at your emotions here and there.
This is a very good novel.
The Return is one fine work of fiction--probably Sasser's best, though I haven't read all his books to state that emperically.
The narrator is Jack Kazmarek, a widower with miriad health problems on top of his PTSD. For many years he has been neighbors with another Vietnam vet, Pete Brauer. Both of them were mustang officers--having taken their lumps as enlisted men prior to being commissioned. Kazmarek was a platoon leader in the 9th Infantry, while Brauer had been a Navy SEAL. Although both of them spent a tour in the same AO during the same time, they never met until retiring in the same Florida trailer park decades later.
The story opens on the loss of Kazmarek's closest friend. Pete dies alone in his trailer, clutching a photo of a beautiful French-Vietnamese woman. Jack has noticed the portrait in his friend's house over the years (even finding her face familiar), but Pete rarely talked about it. His only mention of the woman in the image was cryptic: "May God forgive me."
Jack is almost as intrigued as I was. Eventually he begins investigating, to find out who the woman was and where she might be now. The investigation leads Jack back to Vietnam where he must confront some of his own long-buried demons.
The story is filled in with flashbacks--some of Jack's own, but most by the people who remembered Pete and Mhai (the woman in the photo). All the reader's curiosity is satisfied by the end, as we learn just how extensively Jack and Pete crossed each others' paths during that insane conflict.
Sasser is not your typical war novelist who portrays American involvement in Indochina as one huge Mai-Lai massacre. And yet he does depict atrocities committed by Americans. And there is surprising depth to all the main characters, including the Viet Cong, who are treated as even-handedly as any reasonable person could hope for. Sasser's Vietnam is not black or white, but a convoluted, maddening mess of grays. Perhaps the Cong sympathizers (which comprise most of our government, media and education establishments) would even enjoy how, in the novel, US forces suffer a significant tactical defeat--something that didn't happen but makes the VC seem more heroic in retrospect. Everyone conveniently forgets that failure to achieve victory in Vietnam was mandated by the very government that put Americans in harm's way to begin with. The VC and NVA didn't defeat the US military--the "war" was lost in the Oval Office.
There are a few plot twists Sasser has in store, and I didn't deduce all of them beforehand correctly. Characters are complex and believable. Narrator Jack Kazmarek has political opinions, but the story "he" tells lets the chips fall where they may, regardless of who it may please or offend (in fact, it reminds me somewhat of The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna). There's enough action and conflict to keep you turning pages, and even a few tugs at your emotions here and there.
This is a very good novel.
May 10, 2013
Great story. The back-and-forth between present day and wartime worked really well. I didn't find it jarring at all. This was a very enjoyable historical thriller. Some nice twists at the end.
The only things that really bothered me were several references to Blackhawk helicopters in the Vietnam parts of the story. The Blackhawk was fielded until the mid-to-late 1980s. There were a couple of jarring references to 50-caliber Chinese rifles, and one reference to "7.53 bullets" coming from an M-60 machine gun. An understandable error, but it should have been caught by a knowledgeable editor.
I'll read more by Mr. Sasser.
The only things that really bothered me were several references to Blackhawk helicopters in the Vietnam parts of the story. The Blackhawk was fielded until the mid-to-late 1980s. There were a couple of jarring references to 50-caliber Chinese rifles, and one reference to "7.53 bullets" coming from an M-60 machine gun. An understandable error, but it should have been caught by a knowledgeable editor.
I'll read more by Mr. Sasser.
September 16, 2015
Interesting story of the Vietnam War. Two retired vets cross paths in Florida, living next door to each other. When Pete dies holding a painting of a Vietnamese woman, Jack decides he must find out the story behind the painting. This led to a return trip to Vietnam and having to face horrors that he had refused to ever talk about. He had to face himself. Then to find that his path and Pete's had actually crossed, made him face all of his fears. Excellent ending. The novel was marred by bad editing. Spelling errors abounded, but it did not take from the story line.
January 3, 2013
Halfway through this book, I was thinking about nit finishing it. the flashbacks were becoming annoying. But I liked the story line and the overall writing style, so I decided to finish. I am glad that I did because the second half was where the the meat and potatoes were so to speak. The ending made it all worth it; several stories wrapped up in one, including a love story. Very well written.
July 29, 2012
Great book. What an ending. I did not see that coming.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews