Well, not exactly "veterans who wouldn't come home." London editor Stevenson (We Wrecked the Place) offers in-depth profiles of 20 expatriate American veterans of the Vietnam War who now live in Thailand and Vietnam. Most did come home, but later moved to Southeast Asia for a variety of reasons ranging from the political to the hedonistic. Many of these disparate tales are compelling, and Stevenson throws revealing light on an intriguing and little-known American subculture. He also correctly and convincingly debunks the "too often misremembered" image of Vietnam veterans as "drug-addled basket cases, shell-shocked baby killers, or treasonous 'fraggers' who deserved the jeers and taunts that some received" after they came home. Despite that, it's difficult to envision how this book will help counter the negative image of Vietnam veterans. Stevenson's 20 veterans all are members of what he calls "an awkward, out-of-the-way fringe group" of less than a thousand men who have very little in common save that they have chosen to live in Southeast Asia. This nongroup includes several men on the far political left and several on the far right. They "run the gamut of retrospective Vietnam [War] thinking," as Stevenson accurately puts it. Some of the men are living comfortably in retirement; some are in Asia temporarily for work. Some have been done in by classic midlife crises; some are there for the wine, women and song. More than a few appear to be wrestling with war-related emotional problems. (May)
