Through the Picture Tube

AFTER THE FALL OF VIETNAM: AN ADVENTURE NOVEL ABOUT A DRAFT DODGER'S JOURNEY THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Twenty years after the Vietnam War is over, Frank Walsh, a middle-aged draft dodger from Toronto, who has just lost his wife, finds himself depressed, and haunted by the ghosts of a war he only knew from TV. He impulsively decides to go to Vietnam to try to discover for himself what really happened to his high school buddy, the only American killed in the Bien Lai Massacre. As Frank digs deeper into the past, he must come to grips with the moral dilemmas raised by the horrifying massacre of all the inhabitants of a small village. At the same time, he must come to terms with his own conscience for taking the easy way out.
During Frank’s odyssey, he encounters a post-war Vietnam that reveals the utter futility of a war, which America lost in its own soul.
This novel of self-discovery is filled with adventure and romance as well as the moral dilemmas of war. It takes the reader on a fascinating tour of Vietnam as it was after the war, which reveals the richness of Vietnamese culture and shows it to be much more than a former war zone.

Patrick Grady was an American draft dodger who went to Canada. His own experiences were chronicled in James Dickerson's book, North To Canada: Men and Women Against the Viet Nam War.