November 20, 1968 Now I'll have more time. I'm finally out of the shit. The docs say I got hit a week ago, but I don't remember...I woke up in a hospital bed. A nice young doc said, ""You're lucky, Corporal Divina, you're going home. Nasty, yeah, some muscle damage, but no vital organs. A frag just missed your heart..."" Doc was wrong. I don't have a heart, not now, anyway. ""The others?"" I asked. He was a nice doc and he looked at me, like maybe that's something I shouldn't have said. ""You're lucky,"" he said and turned away. After being wounded in Vietnam, nineteen-year-old Rico Divina is sent home to a string of low-paying jobs and shabby apartments while trying to cope with the demons inside him. As an ""Indipino"" (half Yakima, half Filipino), Rico has come up against obstacles all his life - those of race, culture, nationality, and now the experience of war - that have left him without hope. In time he embarks on a course that is self-destructive and increasingly violent. People and situations present themselves, offering him the chance to turn his life around, but Rico, whether from lack of faith or pride, rejects them. The only thing that sustains him is writing his own story with a happy ending - something he has long suspected he will never have.
