Overview

During the last desperate days of the Vietnam War, American soldier Israel Broussard is assigned to a secret CIA PSYOP far behind enemy lines meant to drive terror into the heart of the North Vietnamese and end an unwinnable war. When the mission goes sideways, Broussard is plunged into a nightmare that he soon finds he is unable to escape, dragging a remnant of that night in the Laotian wilderness with him no matter how far he runs. Five years later, too damaged to return home and holed up in the slums of Bangkok, where he battles sleep, guilt, and a creeping sense of madness, Broussard discovers that he must journey back to the jungles of Laos in an attempt to set things right and reclaim what is left of his life. A fever dream with a Benzedrine chaser, I Am The River provides a daring, often surreal examination of the Vietnam War and the days after it, burrowing down past the bullets and battlefields to discover the lingering horror of warfare, the human consequences of organized violence, and the lasting effects of trauma on the psyche, and the soul.

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9781590214459

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Reviews

"""A sense of being hunted, and haunted, hits you right from the start of I Am The River. That mood only grows in intensity as the scope of this novel's nightmare takes shape. It's supernatural and geopolitical and an unforgettable time."" - Victor LaValle, author The Ballad of Black Tom ""Grau's poetic prose and stunning evocation of time and place...from the killing fields of Vietnam to the haunted alleyways of Bangkok, form a fever dream of copious bloodshed and many shades of gray."" - Publishers Weekly, starred review ""I Am The River is the kind of thing that might happen if Algernon Blackwood had been brought in to do a rewrite of Apocalypse Now. A man barely holding onto his sanity in Bangkok remains haunted, stalked by a huge hound and undone by his own addiction. His only way out is through revisiting his past in the Vietnam War and the secret PSY-OPS mission he was involved in-and which he's been running from ever since. A haunting meditation on war, death, addiction, and responsibility, with mindblowing forays into the weird."" - Brian Evenson, author of A Collapse of Horses and The Warren ""T.E. Grau's blazing, immersive novel takes us on the hell-ride of the Vietnam War's last days as its raging waters also carry us through the first of our last days. I Am The River is a hallucinatory tour de force."" - Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World ""An intelligent accumulation of inner and outer darkness."" - Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual ""A lush green nightmarish journey into the dark, reminiscent of the late, great Lucius Shepard."" - Ben Loory, author of Tales of Falling and Falling"

A sense of being hunted, and haunted, hits you right from the start of I Am The River. That mood only grows in intensity as the scope of this novel's nightmare takes shape. It's supernatural and geopolitical and an unforgettable time. - Victor LaValle, author The Ballad of Black Tom Grau's poetic prose and stunning evocation of time and place...from the killing fields of Vietnam to the haunted alleyways of Bangkok, form a fever dream of copious bloodshed and many shades of gray. - Publishers Weekly, starred review I Am The River is the kind of thing that might happen if Algernon Blackwood had been brought in to do a rewrite of Apocalypse Now. A man barely holding onto his sanity in Bangkok remains haunted, stalked by a huge hound and undone by his own addiction. His only way out is through revisiting his past in the Vietnam War and the secret PSY-OPS mission he was involved in-and which he's been running from ever since. A haunting meditation on war, death, addiction, and responsibility, with mindblowing forays into the weird. - Brian Evenson, author of A Collapse of Horses and The Warren T.E. Grau's blazing, immersive novel takes us on the hell-ride of the Vietnam War's last days as its raging waters also carry us through the first of our last days. I Am The River is a hallucinatory tour de force. - Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World An intelligent accumulation of inner and outer darkness. - Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual A lush green nightmarish journey into the dark, reminiscent of the late, great Lucius Shepard. - Ben Loory, author of Tales of Falling and Falling

Author Information

T.E. Grau is the author of dozens of stories and other written works, including the books They Don't Come Home Anymore, Triptych: Three Cosmic Tales, The Lost Aklo Stories, The Mission, and The Nameless Dark, which was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award for Single-Author Collection. Grau lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

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