A Thousand Daggers

With a backdrop in actual psychiatric experience, this novel about six aging combat veterans seeking treatment in a V.A. mental ward in Montana examines the neglect of our soldiers who are suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although more than 350,000 Americans suffered and died in the Vietnam War, many who were wounded in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia found their way back to the United States. The bodies, minds, and hearts of these troops experienced a modern strain of damage that demonstrates how poorly our 19-year-old warriors, both men and women, are prepared for the psychological and spiritual aspects of their journey through war. The stories of these particular heroes, still bleeding from "a thousand daggers," are fictional; their experiences are not.