Lest We Forget

Back when I was starting LOSTINE, back when Koz and the Narrator were just a couple

of chapters into Coffin Marsh, and they had found a kid’s amputated finger in that

swamp, because I knew right then LOSTINE was going to be a serious work, I gave the

Narrator and Koz skills – skills taught them by Koz’s uncle – a combat Marine. There

 was a language that went with Marine-hood in the 1960s; it was the language of jungle

fighting inVietnam.

In LOSTINE, I had two 6th-Grade boys “facing real dangers”, as the Narrator put it. I

had to make the reader believe middle-schoolers could do what they did – and make

those boys believe it themselves – just as they believed they understood what a Marine

does.

Early on, as LOSTINE was first read to an Oregon writers’ group called Tuesday,  a man

in the group exclaimed in irritation, “This is about Vietnam!” I never thought that.

I did see LOSTINE as Vietnam-flavored; it fit the nature of a swamp. I wanted  readers to

be able to taste the same lurking, silent dangers those boys knew Koz’s uncle and dad had

faced.

But I found out, after that objection during a Tuesday session, that I reveled in adding

every bit of Vietnamesque I could sift into the brew as LOSTINE started to bubble. No

politics. Writing LOSTINE, I found myself wanting to commemorate the Vietnam

experience Americans in the field had undergone – the disorientation – the creeping,

often overwhelming anxiety.