The Road Home

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Opening in an Army emergency room in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, this novel gives readers an unforgettable glimpse of the everyday carnage of war. Army nurse Rebecca Phillips (first introduced in White's pseudonymously written Echo Company series) relies on Darvon, amphetamines, Coca-Cola and booze-not to mention her own indomitable spirit-to get through the grueling hours caring for wounded and dying young soldiers. A perfectionist with a tart tongue and fondness for old movies, Rebecca wrestles with despair about the war, guilt and responsibility; she also has a difficult romance with Michael Jennings (also of the Echo Company books), a ``grunt'' who is severely wounded before his discharge. Numb and confused following her own return to the States, Rebecca sets out on a cross-country road trip-and ends up in Michael's hometown. Even in a novel with as much momentum as this one has (and White's wise-cracking prose style is as readable as ever), the lump-in-the-throat intensity of Rebecca and Michael's prickly reunion is striking. Inextricable from the story's anti-war theme is its fiercely compassionate loyalty to the people who served in Vietnam, making this an intriguing complement to such novels as Marsha Qualey's Come In from the Cold. Ages 13-up. (Mar.)q

The ALAN Review - Marjorie M. Kaiser

Realities of U.S. Army field hospitals, like those portrayed on the television shows MASH and China Beach, come alive in Part I of this sensitive and insightful story of young Army nurse Rebecca Phillips. At 21, Phillips must face not only the brutalities of the Vietnamese War and the slaughter and maiming of innocent young soldiers but also her own physical injuries, emotional exhaustion, and the deterioration of her relationship with her family back home, torn apart by the conflicting local and national views of U.S. involvement in the Vietnamese conflict. In Part II, Phillips' tour is over, and she is back home in Massachusetts, trying to reconnect with family and former friends and struggling to rediscover who she is and what she most values. Though long, The Road Home will absorb older teens because of its rich blend of realism and romance, its in-depth character exploration, and its fast-paced style filled with dialogue and action. Here is a stunning portrait, too, of the role of capable women in military situations.

School Library Journal

Gr 8-12-A gripping book set during the late 1960s. Shortly after finishing nursing school, Becky Phillips, 21, goes to Vietnam, where she has been ``in country'' for almost a year. Her daily tasks involve horror and blood as the choppers unload countless wounded GIs. She is plagued by many demons, including surviving an attack on a helicopter and watching as two friends died. She and Michael, one of the young soldiers in the company, begin writing, and a romance develops. Then he is brought to the ER, and the cocky, confident kid she has come to know is now an angry, embittered young man who is sent home. Finally, it is time for Becky to return to her former world. In a particularly moving scene, a businessman in the airplane seat next to her all but recoils at the sight of her uniform. Once home, after spending her days in her room and her nights drinking on the living-room couch, she heads West, finds Michael, and tries to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. White's account makes readers feel the agony of Vietnam...not just the horror of war, but the pain of knowing that those who served and suffered were despised by a large part of the society that sent them there in the first place.-Evelyn Carter Walker, Alexandrian Public Library, Mt. Vernon, IN

Library Journal

While I make a point of not including out-of-print titles in this column, I am making an exception for this unforgettable story of an army nurse's journey home from Vietnam. On the day two of her best friends are killed, Rebecca loses both her moral virginity and her sense of humor. She has withstood weeks in triage without sleep, hopped up on amphetamines, making life-and-death decisions without time to consider the consequences. Until she meets Mike. Her romantic interest in the young soldier is complicated by her fear that one day he will arrive in her emergency room. Her fears are realized, and Mike is sent home without a leg, leaving her alone to endure the remainder of her tour. Nothing she has experienced prepares her for the pain of coming back to her life in Boston-back to face a disapproving father, a dead fiancé, and a brother gone to Canada to avoid the draft. Only Mike (an alcoholic shell of his former self) understands her confusion, and the two navigate the path together on "the road home." This work and White's brilliant "Echo Company" series are well worth the time spent hunting them down through the secondary book market and interlibrary loan.—Angelina Benedetti, "35 Going on 13," BookSmack! 8/19/10