Literary Fiction · DarkA badly wounded Vietnam veteran arrives in a Midwestern river town, and a ghost from his company tells his story
Paco's Story
A wounded Vietnam veteran tries to start over in a small river town
Paco Sullivan is a seriously wounded Vietnam veteran who arrives in Boone, a small river town in the Midwest, looking for work and a new start. His injuries and heavy medication make the townspeople curious and suspicious. He tries to adjust to civilian life while carrying his memories of the war. The story is told by an unnamed ghost, a soldier who served with Paco and died with the rest of his company, and it moves between Boone and flashbacks to Vietnam.
More about this book
Who
Paco Sullivan, a wounded veteran, and an unnamed ghost narrator who speaks to a listener he calls James.
World
Boone, a river town in the Midwest, in the early 1970s, and Vietnam in flashbacks.
What makes it different
The narrator is a dead soldier. Heinemann drew on his own Vietnam service, and the book is classed as magical realism.
Feel
Grim and haunted. It won the 1987 National Book Award for Fiction, a result that the New York Times called a stunning literary upset.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- Paco's StoryWikipedia