Gerald McCarthy enlisted in the Marines at 17 and volunteered for Vietnam. After the war he went AWOL, then to civilian jails and military brigs and finally to a Navy psychiatric ward, where he witnessed patient-attempted suicides. Medically discharged, he returned home to upstate New York and piecework in shoe factories. Written in two voices—one lucid, one dreamlike—his memoir delivers a jump-cut narrative of his troubled adolescence, his wartime experiences and his struggle to come unstuck from his own life
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REVIEWS:
“Fifty Years After Vietnam,” Atlantic Northeast (Summer 2024).
“Gerald McCarthy: Haunted Marine, VVAW Activist, College Professor,” Portside (July 2024)