The Volunteer

Resumen del libro

An odyssey of loss and salvation ranging across four generations of fathers and sons, in the finest tradition of American storytelling. The year is 1966 and a young man named Vollie Frade, almost on a whim, enlists in the United States Marine Corps to fight in Vietnam. Breaking definitively from his rural Iowan parents, Vollie puts in motion a chain of events that sees him go to work for people with intentions he cannot yet grasp.

From the Cambodian jungle, to a flophouse in Queens, to a commune in New Mexico, Vollie's path traces a secret history of life on the margins of America, culminating with an inevitable and terrible reckoning. Scibona's story of a restless soldier pressed into service for a clandestine branch of the US government unfolds against the backdrop of the seismic shifts in global politics of the second half of the twentieth century.

Biografía del autor

Salvatore Scibona nació en Cleveland, Ohio. Con su primera novela fue finalista del National Book Award y ganador del Young Lions Fiction Award. Su obra ha sido premiada con una beca Guggenheim y los premios Pushcart, O. Henry y Whiting. El New Yorker lo incluyó en su lista de "20 Under 40". Dirige un prestigioso programa de becas del Centro Cullman para Académicos y Escritores en la Biblioteca Pública de Nueva York.