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A review by suzemo
The Healer's War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
3.0
I had been seeing this book crop up in various book clubs I belonged to, and discussed by people I follow, but I had never gotten around to reading it. Because it is narrated by the incredible Robin Miles, I picked it up to give it a try. While I found the novel interesting, I didn't really latch onto it very well.
Kitty is our main character and the story is told through her eyes. She's a nurse in Vietnam, during the war, just trying to survive and have what life she can. Along the way, she gets an amulet from an older, dying shaman-like Vietnamese man and learns to see, read, and heal through auras.
Eventually bad things happen, she is captured, and then transferred back to the States.
The author did a phenomenal job, I though, of transporting the reader to the Vietnam war and the proverbial hell of war is well represented. All of the "bad" and "good" guys were all very grey, so there were no evil vs good comparisons - one could understand the motivations of any of the characters, even the bat-shit crazy ones.
Kitty, herself, was amazing in that she was not. She was a regular nurse, essentially tricked into the joke of a war, and she was trying to learn how to survive with what skills she had in that kind of atmosphere. I found her trials of dealing with being captured and then further trials of returning to civilization very well done. It could have been a lot darker (and maybe should have, but then I would have probably not finished), but I'm glad it was not. I think it gave a great look into PTSD and the loss of self for a soldier without being incredibly dark.
Was it worth the read? Absolutely. Did I like it? Absolutely not. It was a fine book, and I think that someone like me, a Gen-Xer who has never seen the war, but has absolutely been tangentially exposed to the brutality, betrayal, and horror that was the Vietnam war would absolutely appreciate it, but it's not necessarily a trip I want to take too often.
Kitty is our main character and the story is told through her eyes. She's a nurse in Vietnam, during the war, just trying to survive and have what life she can. Along the way, she gets an amulet from an older, dying shaman-like Vietnamese man and learns to see, read, and heal through auras.
Eventually bad things happen, she is captured, and then transferred back to the States.
The author did a phenomenal job, I though, of transporting the reader to the Vietnam war and the proverbial hell of war is well represented. All of the "bad" and "good" guys were all very grey, so there were no evil vs good comparisons - one could understand the motivations of any of the characters, even the bat-shit crazy ones.
Kitty, herself, was amazing in that she was not. She was a regular nurse, essentially tricked into the joke of a war, and she was trying to learn how to survive with what skills she had in that kind of atmosphere. I found her trials of dealing with being captured and then further trials of returning to civilization very well done. It could have been a lot darker (and maybe should have, but then I would have probably not finished), but I'm glad it was not. I think it gave a great look into PTSD and the loss of self for a soldier without being incredibly dark.
Was it worth the read? Absolutely. Did I like it? Absolutely not. It was a fine book, and I think that someone like me, a Gen-Xer who has never seen the war, but has absolutely been tangentially exposed to the brutality, betrayal, and horror that was the Vietnam war would absolutely appreciate it, but it's not necessarily a trip I want to take too often.