LitPDX seeks to amplify marginalized voices, and welcomes all, their ideas, their events, and their words.
For details regarding specific events please contact the organizers or venues. If you are an organizer or venue and would like to reach out to us please feel free to contact us or submit an event using our submission form. We’d love to hear from you!
- This event has passed.
Livestream Reading: Jack Estes
January 19, 2021 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
FreeAnnie Bloom’s welcomes back Portland author Jack Estes for a livestream readings from his latest novel, Searching for Gurney.
Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwtfu-gpjMpGNMTQTTvICrt-2_SfXSyYru3
About the book:
Searching for Gurney explores the damaged lives of three U.S. Marines and one North Vietnamese soldier in the late 1960s and ’70s. Each character’s story begins at a different place-JT, home and struggling with flashbacks; Coop, on leave and getting drunk at his grandfather’s funeral; Hawkeye, at the moment a judge gives him the choice of jail or boot camp; and Vuong, leaving his small village to join the NVA with patriotic fervor. Sent home after a horrific ambush, the Marines face new battles with PTSD and a hostile American public that treats them as criminals. Nightmares, anger, and substance abuse destroy family relationships and, ultimately, one character’s life. For all of them, making sense of life after war requires the utmost courage.
“Searching for Gurney is a tender, convincing, sometimes harrowing, and wonderfully written novel that explores the psychological aftershocks of the American war in Vietnam. For veterans and for the families.of veterans, this book is a must-read. Even more than that, I highly recommend Searching for Gurney to those who rattle sabers and wave flags but have never experienced the horrors of people killing other people.” —Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
About the author:
Jack Estes is a Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam in 1968–’69. Jack’s essays have appeared in Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Oregonian, and other periodicals.