Bobbie

Ann Mason’s debut novel—"a brilliant and moving book... a moral tale

“How Ms. Mason conjures a vivid image of the

futility of war and its searing legacy of confusion out of the searching

Samantha “Sam” Hughes is in her senior year of high school in rural

Kentucky. Her father, whom she never knew, was killed in Vietnam before she

was born. Sam lives with her uncle Emmett, a veteran who appears to be

suffering from exposure to Agent Orange. Amidst worrying about her uncle and

yearning to figure out who she is and learn about the father she never knew,

Sam develops feelings for Tom, one of Emmett's veteran buddies. Tom and

Emmett attempt to shield Sam from the truth of what they endured, but she has

become convinced that her life is bound to the war in Vietnam.

In Country is both a powerful and touching novel of America’s

ghosts and a beautiful portrayal of a family, not unlike many others, left

bruised and twisted by the war. At the time of its publication in 1985,

Richard Eder’s rave LA Times review concluded: “One of the questions

for post-war American literature, dealt with variously by Updike, Cheever,

Roth, Salinger and a host of others, is whether the larger capacities of the

human spirit can be exercised, so to speak, in a motel room equipped with

color TV and a drinks refrigerator. The answers vary; Mason has found her own

striking variety of ‘yes.’”