Ave Antonina

About to graduate from college at the height of the Vietnam War, Peter Dandridge struggles with the sort of emotional conflict common to draft-eligible young men of his time. A southerner of rural upbringing, he has fallen in love with Stephanie Ames, a medical student whom he meets in a hospital emergency room. He longs to splice his life to hers while they prepare for their careers-hers as an orthopedic surgeon, his as an architect.A football injury he suffered in high school should shield him from the draft, but feelings of guilt and longing pull him toward the war. A friend from high school has returned from a year in Vietnam. Peter has seen in this man's eyes the damage the war inflicted, and he asks himself what right he has to seek exemption from this sort of pain. Peter also longs to follow the example set by his father, a gentle, self-effacing man who won a Bronze Star in World War II.Peter's mother adds to the crosscurrents tugging him toward and away from the war by vowing that if he seeks out combat duty in Vietnam, she'll reserve a cemetery plot for him in what she calls the "idiots' row."His effort to chart a middle course through this emotional rip tide leads him to duty in Vietnam as what he calls "a sort of schoolmarm in jungle fatigues." In a fellow soldier named Rabinowitz, Peter finds a target for his frustration and resentment. Rabby, an Army reservist, volunteered for duty in Vietnam. He seems confident he'll return to a life of privilege in the States, but a few flaws appear in the image he projects. One is his obsession with barbed wire. Another is the growing evidence that a woman named Antonina-in Rabby's telling, a figure in a distant family chronicle-has impacted his life in ways far more immediate and profound.A slowly developing spy plot and a Viet Cong ground attack reveal to Peter how wrong he has been about Rabinowitz and much else, including what from the war he must carry with him. Along with a black mark on his service record, Peter brings home from Vietnam lingering questions about Rabinowitz and Antonina. Stephanie prods him to seek answers, and with a small showing of soldierly valor, he does. Those answers prove strange, horrific and-at least by Peter-wholly unforeseen.