A soldier serving with the MIKE Force in Vietnam wakes up every day knowing it might be his last. You don’t run with the indigenous Montagnard strikers expecting to live forever. That’s the nature of the beast that haunts American advisors serving with the tough little highland tribal volunteers in Vietnam’s misty, enemy-infested central highlands. It’s tough, demanding duty and just the kind of thing that attracts military mavericks like former Peace Corps volunteer Galen St. Cyr, who finds empathy and a new, mystical identity with the Jarai tribesmen of his MIKE Force unit. He finds himself on the outskirts of the regular U.S. military along with hand-picked American, Australian, and Vietnamese Special Forces advisors and quickly discovers that duty with Montagnard soldiers involves more than just beating the bush and killing the enemy. The world of the Jarai is both primitive and complex, and learning to survive in it is the challenge of Galen’s turbulent life. On a journey that becomes as much spiritual as military, St. Cyr virtually becomes Jarai, taking a hauntingly lovely native lover who commands a squad of assassins and listens to spirit voices, and deals with tribal separatist elements who are planning an anti-government coup.

“Given the dearth of native characters and perspectives in books about America's Vietnam intervention,this work fills a gap: It is one of the most nuanced, even-handed novels on the conflict….it has more in common with Last of the Mohicans than Rambo or Delta Force. And that makes it far superior as a work of art-and far more fascinating as a work of fiction.”

-Andrew Salmon, author of To the Last Round: The Epic British Stand on the Imjin River and Scorched Earth, Black Snow: Britain and Australia in the Korean War.

Shaun Darragh

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