Indian Country

By Philip Caputo

Book Overview

Indian Country is a sweeping, brave and compassionate story from one of our most acclaimed chroniclers of the Vietnam experience. Christian Starkmann follows his boyhood friend, an Ojibwa Indian called Bonny George, from the wilderness of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where they roamed, hunted and fished in their youths, to the wilderness of Vietnam, where they serve as soldiers in the same platoon. After returning home from the war, his friend buried on the battlefield he left behind, Christian begins to make a life for himself. Yet years later, although he is happily married to June, a good-hearted social worker, and has two daughters, Christian is still fighting--with the searing memories of combat, with the paranoid visions that are clouding his marriage and threatening his career, and most of all with the ghost of Bonny George, who haunts his dreams and presses him to come to terms with a secret so powerful it could destroy everything he has built.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375725105
• ISBN13: 9780375725104
• Release Date: March 2004
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A journey

This is an extraordinarily good read. The character development is complex, non-patronising, well researched, and above all entertaining.This is not a light action read by any stretch of the imagination. Rather a detailed look at the complexity of human relationships including the hope, the joy, the intentional, and more often unintentional pain that these combined with unavoidable, cataclysmic events evoke.Philip deals sensitively, and sometimes brusqely, with interracial issues (in this case particularly native Indian, but also Scandinavian), the whole pre- and post-Vietnam thing (from a sometimes scarily detailed perspective), marriage, work, intimate friendships, and the remote lifestyle of the logging industry in Northern USA.I found the end simply mind blowing and would recommend this book to anyone who has thought seriously about their own sanity, who has served in the Forces whether or not they agreed with their country's ideology, who has hurt or been hurt by someone. Of course, if you don't fit into the above categories, you probably haven't lived :o)It was a pleasant change from the hackneyed descriptions that plague so many of our current best selling authors. I guess this book isn't a best seller simply because it strikes so close to home.If you read nothing else this year, get this book!

A deeply moving, wonderful book

It's been years since I first read Phillip Caputo's "Indian Country", but I still remember it very well. It's the kind of story that really stays with you - the troubled Vietnam combat vet dealing with flashbacks and terrible memories, the earthy, loving, loyal wife struggling to understand, and the child at the center of this volatile family.It is a wonderful book, deeply moving and emotional, and has the ring of truth. I was moved to tears several times in the reading of this novel and I heartily recommend it to anyone who is in search of something meaningful to read. If you're looking for simple, escapist fiction, this is not the book for you. Read "Indian Country" and it will stay with you for the rest of your life.