A. . . . lyrical, and ultimately heartening novel about one family's experience during the Vietnam War that has much to say to a new generation of readers.

Doctors don't fight; doctors heal. But when the young narrator of Maria Testa's lyric novel watches her father march off to serve a year in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, a year seems like a very long time. A year is a long time when you're waiting for letters, waiting for word. A year seems endless when you don't know where your father is anymore. A year is almost forever when you're wondering . . . and forgetting.

Through the eyes of an observant child, Maria Testa, author of the critically acclaimed BECOMING JOE DIMAGGIO, has written a taut and tender American ballad of one family's experience in the year 1968 - a year that would be a turning point in both U.S. involvement in South Vietnam and American public opinion.