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HEALER'S WAR, THE

HEALER'S WAR, THE

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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Paints a vivid, detailed picture
Review: Being born in the early '80s, I never experienced what the Vietnam War was like for Americans, military and civilian. To me, Vietnam was "just another war"; another chapter in my history textbook. Until I came across The Healer's War. The Healer's War is pure fiction, set in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam. The plot revolves around a mysterious amulet that the main character Kitty "inherits" from one of her patients. (She's a nurse in Vietnam.) As time progresses, Kitty realizes the true healing power of the amulet. Although fiction, this book paints a vivid picture of Vietnam during the war. The conditions the soldiers had to tolerate, and the daily battles is described in excruciating, almost explicit detail. The Healer's War gave me a view on Vietnam that no textbook or history class could offer. I will never look at the Vietnam War the same way again, and I now hold a respect for those that served in it. This book is a must-read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Paints a vivid, detailed picture
Review: Being born in the early '80s, I never experienced what the Vietnam War was like for Americans, military and civilian. To me, Vietnam was "just another war"; another chapter in my history textbook. Until I came across The Healer's War. The Healer's War is pure fiction, set in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam. The plot revolves around a mysterious amulet that the main character Kitty "inherits" from one of her patients. (She's a nurse in Vietnam.) As time progresses, Kitty realizes the true healing power of the amulet. Although fiction, this book paints a vivid picture of Vietnam during the war. The conditions the soldiers had to tolerate, and the daily battles is described in excruciating, almost explicit detail. The Healer's War gave me a view on Vietnam that no textbook or history class could offer. I will never look at the Vietnam War the same way again, and I now hold a respect for those that served in it. This book is a must-read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Paints a vivid, detailed picture
Review: Being born in the early '80s, I never experienced what the Vietnam War was like for Americans, military and civilian. To me, Vietnam was "just another war"; another chapter in my history textbook. Until I came across The Healer's War. The Healer's War is pure fiction, set in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam. The plot revolves around a mysterious amulet that the main character Kitty "inherits" from one of her patients. (She's a nurse in Vietnam.) As time progresses, Kitty realizes the true healing power of the amulet. Although fiction, this book paints a vivid picture of Vietnam during the war. The conditions the soldiers had to tolerate, and the daily battles is described in excruciating, almost explicit detail. The Healer's War gave me a view on Vietnam that no textbook or history class could offer. I will never look at the Vietnam War the same way again, and I now hold a respect for those that served in it. This book is a must-read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A painful but glorious book by a superb author
Review: Having no desire to read anything about the Vietnam War, I nevertheless picked up this book because I love the author's work, and because it was good enough to win the Nebula Award! Once I read the first sentence, I couldn't put it down. Even in this hard look at the war from a nurse's point of view, Scarborough's humor and deft touch shine through. It helped us to understand family members who came back from Vietnam forever changed and lost. The book is brutally honest and touchingly gentle, and merits more than one reading. A true "must-read" for everyone.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The cold, hard face of war stripped away
Review: I'm too young to remember the Vietnam war, nor am I in the medical profession, so I am not going to comment on the veracity of the medicine and the war action. It is enough for me that the author served as a nurse in Vietnam during the war there. The story initially feels autobiographical - the main character, Kitty, is a nurse in the long-term orthopedics ward in an army hospital. The twist: a Vietnamese holy man gives Kitty an amulet that allows her to see the "aura" of people, revealing their inner thoughts - how they are hurt (mentally and physically), their true moods. In addition, by pouring her "life force" into patients, or by channelling others, she can effect remarkable healing on her patients.

The amulet is a simple plot device that Scarborough uses to delve into the psyche of the various characters in the book, and to humanise the terrible events that occur around her heroine. It also allows us to suspend disbelief that a city girl from the U.S. could survive a chopper crash into a jungle full of VC and U.S. forces trying to kill each other. Scarborough does not hold back - she gives us the full force of the savagery that made the Vietnam war so different from other conflicts, and does so in a fairly non-judgemental way (i.e. both sides are committing the atrocities).

This is not a "feel-good" book by any means. It is not science fiction either, in spite of the fact that the Science Fiction Writers' Association awarded it the Nebula in 1989. It is an good book, though, and I recommend it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Hard Trip Worth Taking
Review: If you haven't read this book, get Amazon to find you a copy. I never wanted to go back to Viet Nam, but I'm glad I took the journey with Annie Scarborough. Hers is a remarkable story worth reading and reading. --Warren Norwood

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wow, a fabulous well written tale!
Review: Such a wonderful hopeful story set in such a horror-filled time. Ms.Scarborough's writing is so real and humorous I couldn't help but be pulled into the story to feel alongside her characters. This book I simply did not want to put down.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wow, a fabulous well written tale!
Review: Such a wonderful hopeful story set in such a horror-filled time. Ms.Scarborough's writing is so real and humorous I couldn't help but be pulled into the story to feel alongside her characters. This book I simply did not want to put down.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Healer's War
Review: The book was absolutely gripping. It is hard to believe that the writer of the Fairy Godmother books could produce such an emotionally overwhelming book of the horrors of the Vietnam war. You know the book is fiction, but you wonder just "how much" is really ficiton. E. A. Scarborough pulls you kicking and screaming through desperate war situations that you know, deep inside, must have been real, yet she makes it bearable with her "healing hand" of magic and mystery. Had I known beforehand what the book was about, I would never have read it. I was sick of the Vietnam war ages ago when it happened. But, Scarborough made me relive it with her, sometimes sobbing, sometimes livid with fury, and I wound up reading all night a book that years ago, I would have scorned. She is quite a lady, and a genius to have pulled *me* into her coils.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Healer's War
Review: The book was absolutely gripping. It is hard to believe that the writer of the Fairy Godmother books could produce such an emotionally overwhelming book of the horrors of the Vietnam war. You know the book is fiction, but you wonder just "how much" is really ficiton. E. A. Scarborough pulls you kicking and screaming through desperate war situations that you know, deep inside, must have been real, yet she makes it bearable with her "healing hand" of magic and mystery. Had I known beforehand what the book was about, I would never have read it. I was sick of the Vietnam war ages ago when it happened. But, Scarborough made me relive it with her, sometimes sobbing, sometimes livid with fury, and I wound up reading all night a book that years ago, I would have scorned. She is quite a lady, and a genius to have pulled *me* into her coils.


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