Walking Wounded (Vietnam Series #5)

by Chris Lynch

Overview

"The best Vietnam War novels yet for this age range." -- Kirkus Reviews

Morris, Rudi, Ivan, and Beck were best friends. So when one of them was drafted into the Vietnam War, the others signed up, too. They promised to watch out for one another. They pledged to come home together.Now, that pledge has been broken. One of the four has been killed in action. And the remaining three are the only men alive who know the awful truth about their friend's death.Each is left to deal with their secret in his own way. One of them will accompany his friend's body home to Boston. One of them will defy orders in an act of protest. And one of them will decide it's up to him to single-handedly win the war.In the end, Vietnam may claim more than their lives. As the war grinds on, their very souls are at stake. And their shattered friendship will prove either their salvation... or their ruin.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545640176
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	10/21/2014
Series:	Chris Lynch's Vietnam Series , #5
Sold by:	Scholastic, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	611,971
Lexile:	930L (what's this?)
File size:	16 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	12 - 15 Years

About the Author

Chris Lynch is the author of numerous acclaimed books for middle-grade and teen readers, including the Vietnam and World War II series and the National Book Award finalist Inexcusable. He teaches in the Lesley University creative writing MFA program, and divides his time between Massachusetts and Scotland.

Read an Excerpt

From VIETNAM #5:It has to stop somewhere.It looks like it's just gonna go on and on and on, but that would be such a nightmare, it's the kind of nightmare that nightmares have nightmares about. It has to stop somewhere. Somebody's got to do something.This war, or some version of it, seems to have been going on for centuries. Nobody has had any success in ending it over all that time, and I see no indication that anybody is going to manage any different any time soon.Somebody's got to.So it looks like it's up to me. If nobody else is going to do what needs to be done, then I will.

Editorial Reviews

10/01/2014
Gr 5 Up—Four best friends all sign up to fight during the Vietnam War. Though they promise to come home together, one friend doesn't survive and the remaining three must grapple with the truth about his death. The narrative switches among the various first person perspectives—even that of Rudi's ghost. A haunting and unsettling series that tempers the violent aspects of war just enough for the audience, without sacrificing the bitter and heartbreaking emotional truths.

School Library Journal

Praise for Chris Lynch's World War II series:

* "An expertly crafted war story with fluid prose, bleak humor, careful attention to historic detail, and a view of 'The Good War' worth pondering." -- Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred review

"All the sizzle, chaos, noise and scariness of war is clay in the hands of ace storyteller Lynch." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Though aimed at younger readers, Lynch doesn't write down, instead offering a powerful taste of war on a personal level." -- Publishers Weekly


Praise for Chris Lynch's Vietnam series:

"The best Vietnam War novels yet for this age range." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Lynch brilliantly captures the war in small details." -- Booklist

"A fine balance of thoughtfulness and gritty action." -- Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

From the Publisher

2014-07-29
The fifth installment in Lynch's Vietnam series continues the story of four friends who entered the war together and have now been forever changed by it. Though Volume 4, Casualties of War (2013), seemed to have concluded the series, Lynch again takes readers into the minds and souls of Morris, Rudi, Beck and Ivan. Once Rudi was drafted, it was Morris' idea that the four friends would go to Vietnam together, each in a different branch of the service, and somehow keep an eye on one another. Now Rudi has been killed, and Morris goes home as his body escort. Morris feels guilty for forcing everyone into this, and now he's trying to discern meaning from their experience of death in a war they never really understood. This volume continues the first-person narratives in the voices of the four friends, even Rudi's, though now his is a ghostly voice, a questionable contrivance at first but one that ultimately make sense in the overall arc of the story; each of the characters is haunted, and the only meaning they can make is that "You don't have to believe in the war, to believe in the guys." If there's not a tidy conclusion, it's because the fate of the walking wounded is inscrutable. A powerful antidote to those who would glorify war. (Historical fiction. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews