Howard Gets Novelist's War Memoir

Doubleday's Gerry Howard bought a Vietnam memoir by an author who won a National Book Award for his novel about that conflict, Paco's Story, in 1987. Author Larry Heinemann, who served in the war, revisited the country in the '90s, and his book will be a combination of his memories of that time, a reflection on the war's impact on him and his family and a reconstruction of the action he experienced—including the battle recorded in Oliver Stone's Platoon. Howard, who got to know the author when he bought Paco for paperback at Penguin, took North American rights in the book from Ellen Levine at Trident Media Group and plans to publish in 2005.