Water in Darkness

the long version

"Water in Darkness is a taut, disturbing novel that plumbs the depths of human sadness. The book opens within the last months of Jack Tyne's enlistment in the U.S. Army. Tyne is a young soldier haunted by the anonymous death of his father at Hue City during the Vietnam War, and by childhood memories of his stepfather's brutality. On the evening before his discharge, Jack covers his ears and hides in self-loathing while an effeminate soldier, also orphaned by Vietnam, takes a beating. He ultimately returns home to Watega, Illinois and wanders amongst the ruins of stove factories and steel mills long gone South, only to discover the same frustrated America that had forced his escape into the army. He quickly drifts north to Chicago and works day labor, hoping to beat memory, evade conscience, and become invisible. There he meets Danny Morrison, a Vietnam Veteran dismissed from the Chicago Police Department for cocaine abuse. This violent, dispossessed man, filled with his own strange lusts, becomes a surrogate father for Jack Tyne, quickly pulling him into the dark heart of our violent culture."--BOOK JACKET.