American Warrior
James Snyder
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 Infinity Publishing
ISBN: 0741423200

The coming of age of Paul Brett during dire poverty & the Vietnam War.

Paul is little when his father starts bullying him into boxing with huge, heavy gloves. Mostly his dad goes for him when his mother's at work, because when she's home she tries to protect her son. That's when his dad hits her, & then slinks off to the tavern.

They live in China Slough, once a vacation village for San Francisco elite. Ever since WWII the little cabins have become permanent homes for migrant workers. Here Paul grows up, taking on a newspaper route, riding a bicycle his dad put together from scraps. Here he learns about the people, the old, lonely men & women. Here he discovers the lending library, except he can't take any books home because his dad will tear them apart. Here he must cross the Hispanic neighborhood, & fend off their dogs.

One evening he runs over a broken bottle, & is set upon by a gang of older boys. Then from out of the dark, a figure comes flying into the fray, scattering dogs & boys. It's old man Draeger, who takes him home, mops him up & serves him tea.

All Draeger wants to do is be left alone to drink, & remember the good days in the Dutch East Indies, before the War. All Paul wants is to learn is how to do what he saw Draeger do that evening. In time he wears the old man down, & so start the years of grueling instruction in the old-world martial art of Pentjak Silat.

Then two deaths change his life: his father's suicide, & Draeger's heart attack. The freedom from the first & the bequest from the second set his mother & sister up in safety. They also set Paul adrift on a dangerous path when an old school friend draws him into a life of crime.

In American Warrior we are introduced to a young man who has already learnt to survive a dangerous home life, who has already dreamed of what he might become. Now the only place he can go is into military, where he handily survives basic training. Then he chooses to try out for the Green Berets before shipping out to Vietnam.

Just 332 pages long, American Warrior, is packed with action & choices, deceit & loyalty, & the grinding, remorseless games of power played in the military, fighting the enemy & later in prison. It immerses you in a rich & violent tale of courage, skill & becoming.

It is only in the arms of his beloved wife, Sarah, or in the highland jungles near the Laotian border that Paul feels truly alive... & free. Everything & everywhere else, the layers of deceit & coded talk bemuse him.

American Warrior is a demanding read, & not just because it needs an editor. It is shocking & rowdy, noisy & gripping, & I could not put it down. It will take you from California's poverty into military bases, into a war zone, & military prison. It will leave you sweating & raging, with a host of haunting, terribly familiar images of the darker, stealthier side of life.
(03/27/05)

Rebecca