The Things We Do to Make It Home by Beverly Gologorsky [Paperback: Excellent]

Paperback in Excellent condition (211 pages)

The Things We Do to Make It Home captures, in clear, unadorned prose, the legacy the Vietnam War left to the wives and children of the men who fought in it.  Beverly Gologorsky's brilliantly constructed, deeply human novel charts the fates of six couples - the men who came home profoundly altered and the women who strove to create for them a safe haven yet in the end could do little more than bear witness to their pain.
    
In 1973, stateside and seemingly whole, Rooster, Frankie, Jason, and the other vets begin getting on with their lives.  Some marry, find jobs, buy houses.  But beneath the surface activity, there's a dangerous fault line.
    
The Things We Do to Make It Home invites comparison with the work of Tim O'Brien and Bobbie Ann Mason, but its 1990s setting completes the literature for our time.  Told in a spare yet evocative, absolutely original voice, this is a story of deep hungers, the brevity of solace, and the limits of devotion to help those we love.