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The Healer's War
Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Nebula 1989

If you served in Viet Nam and need a memory/reality adjustment, read this book. If you were a hawk, a dove, a draft dodger, or had any strong emotional involvement, read this book. It could heal old wounds. That we could recommend it to such different groups attests to the psychological process it takes us through.

If you're younger and have just heard stories about the Viet Nam experience, this story will give you a vivid image of the reality - quite an accomplishment for a fantasy novel. The author was a nurse in the Viet Nam war and her experience probably echoes the protagonist's sentiment, "...two days after I was in country it was pretty clear that no American, male or female, should have had to be there. If I had to enlist again, nothing short of the invasion of Kansas City would have gotten me into uniform."

We feel the horrors but also the the humor and humanness of existence: "...William seemed perfectly okay. He was one of the nicest people who ever tried to strangle me." "Wow. Snake charming, faith healing, and veterinary medicine all in one day. Ought to look great on my resume."

Vivid descriptions like, "Ahn looked up at me with the lugubrious expression of an amateur undertaker doing his best to look depressed about an improvement in business" team up with some helpful words of wisdom like, "When you turn your face from your fear, that fear bloats with the power you give it. Look it in the eye, and it will diminish into something that is part of your life, part of your memory, something that belongs to you rather than controls you" and give both depth and insight.

The Viet Nam experience is a nightmare of American culture and history. One most people would rather forget. But it holds powerful messages and lessons - communications important to hear and understand. And though it may be painful, "It could be worse. What if I were Vietnamese, with no right and no desire to leave this beautiful, blighted land? If this were my home, and I had nothing to do but stay and try to fend off wave after wave of invaders while my family, the culture I knew, the very landscape rotted around me like an old silk curtain in monsoon season? Nothing to look forward to but struggle and more struggle."

True, this is a story of war and pain and suffering. But more than those, it's the story of healing, of hope, of the fundamental meaningfulness of life.

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