Helen Baldwin is a Baptist preacher’s wife from a poor region of Appalachia. While her ambitious husband is setting up a new church in the city she gets a job at a soup kitchen that includes a table of bitter Vietnam Vets (“…wily elusive, haunting and haunted, fierce and yet fearful of anyone who had not themselves endured the bloodbath that was Vietnam.” Surprise number one, her possessive husband gets her fired. Surprise two, he is having a homosexual affair with his church architect. Surprise three, she falls in love with one of those Vets, a former Vietnam Marine who lives on the edge of sanity. We find out her background (she was molested by her father from the time she was twelve) and understand why it is difficult for her to leave the security of a marriage that got her away from all of that. Now, the day has come for her to face the past and with her new love go back.

The characters are genuine and the emotional dilemma heartfelt. There was one curious touch I found confusing. Ostensibly the narrator is a reincarnated St. Francis of Assisi (who here is a dope addict dying of AIDS), but there are many scenes he would not be privy to in which the author reverts to an omniscient point of view. That proves a bit confusing and inconsistent. And occasionally there are brief passages of heavy handed exposition: “Helen’s compassion was tainted with lust and anger that tempted her to confuse vindication with love.” But let me add, I am both a Vietnam Vet and someone who years ago spent a night in a San Francisco homeless shelter and all the details this book gives ring true. It is well written, original, imaginative, and the chapter heads are great.