This is the story of Frank Walsh, an ex-American draft dodger living in Canada, who watched the Vietnam War through the TV picture tube. Twenty years later, depressed after losing his wife and still haunted by the ghosts of the violent TV images he saw, Frank decides to go to Vietnam to discover for himself what happened to his high school buddy, the only American killed in the Bien Lai massacre. As Frank digs deeper into the past, he must come to grips with the moral dilemmas raised by the horrifying massacre of all of the inhabitants of this small village. With several surprises in store, his trip becomes a voyage of self-discovery and romantic involvement in the least likely of places.
After graduating from the University of Illinois the author (an American) moved to Canada in 1968. He completed a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Toronto in 1973. As a senior official of the Canadian government, the novel Through the Picture Tube was inspired by a recent trip he made to Vietnam to carry out a study for the Asian Development Bank.
Hard cover; 6 x 9, ISBN 1-885003-43-9; $21.95 plus $3.50 S&H.
