Few Vietnam books treat the effects of a U.S. soldier's death on his family. This muscularly written, starkly honest memoir fills a significant gap. Smith (Fatal Treasure
), an Atlanta Journal-Constitution
editor, was 22 years old, the oldest of six children, when his beloved younger brother Jeff was killed by a Vietcong rocket during a firefight near the village of Mai Xa Thi on March 7, 1968. Jeff's death tore the fragile family apart: their mother retreated into severe alcoholism and an all-encompassing fixation on Jeff (who had been her favorite); their emotionally distant father—a WWII Marine beset by postwar demons—left the family for another woman. Smith's other brothers and sisters suffered severe and lasting psychological problems, and Smith himself—while outwardly coping well by marrying, having children and working his way up the journalism ladder—became an emotional cripple bent on self-destruction: "Not only did I thoroughly embrace alcohol, but I also became kind of psychotic." Smith tells his story with bluntness and conviction, including what becomes a cathartic happy ending when he and two of his brother's fellow Marines make a journey to Vietnam in 2001 to visit the spot where Jeff died. (Mar.)
