Between the Covers

Washington Post Book World reviewer Duncan Spencer called Heinemann "the grunt's novelist of the Vietnam War," adding: "His is the storytelling of life and death between the laager and the tree line, a life of dirt, fear, dope, alcohol, brutality, curses and evil. He tells, from his own experience as a soldier, the results of fighting a war without will and without authority." Heinemann spent a number of years working on Close Quarters, his first novel. In a review for the New York Times, critic Richard R. Lingeman called it "an unremittingly honest look into the black pit of war." Paco's Story offers a different perspective on the war. The novel's hero, Paco Sullivan, returns to America wounded and disfigured, his company's only survivor. The ghosts of Paco's fallen comrades narrate the story of his wandering into a small Midwestern town and finding work as a dishwasher in a diner. Most critics found the novel deeply affecting and praised its imagery and unusual ghostly voice. - from Contemporary Authors Onlinemore