Death Zones & Darling Spies: Seven Years of Vietnam War Reporting

In this powerfully plainspoken account, one of the leading female journalists of the Vietnam War relays her personal experience of the bloody conflict that divided America and changed the global political landscape in this powerfully plainspoken account. As a young 26-year-old farm girl from Kansas, Keever arrived in country in 1961 and joined a band of gutsy women—including Gloria Emerson, Frances Fitzgerald, Mary McCarthy, Edith Lederer, Laura Palmer, and Kate Webb—filing from the front lines and jungle combat zones. Keever covered the increasingly divisive high-tech war from all sides—from the Viet Cong wreaking havoc on towns along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, to the American military’s efforts to reinforce those same communities, and the pacific yet passionate Buddhist monks efforts for peace (she interviewed Thich Quang Duc just days before his legendary self-immolation). Whether reporting from the ditches of the siege of Khe Sanh, detailing the harried arrival of U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, or fondly recalling her friendship with Pham Xuan An (one of the eponymous “darling spies”), Keever provides a ground-level look—by turns shrewd, lucid, and humane—of the war in Vietnam. Photos. (May)