Our Brother's Keeper

Book excerpt: Few Vietnam books treat the effects of a U.S. soldier's death on his family. This muscularly written, starkly honest memoir fills a significant gap. Smith (Fatal Treasure), an Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor, was 22 years old, the oldest of six children, when his beloved younger brother Jeff was killed by a Vietcong rocket during a firefight near the village of Mai Xa Thi on March 7, 1968. Jeff's death tore the fragile family apart: their mother retreated into severe alcoholism and an all-encompassing fixation on Jeff (who had been her favorite); their emotionally distant father-a WWII Marine beset by postwar demons-left the family for another woman. Smith's other brothers and sisters suffered severe and lasting psychological problems, and Smith himself-while outwardly coping well by marrying, having children and working his way up the journalism ladder-became an emotional cripple bent on self-destruction: "Not only did I thoroughly embrace alcohol, but I also became kind of psychotic." Smith tells his story with bluntness and conviction, including what becomes a cathartic happy ending when he and two of his brother's fellow Marines make a journey to Vietnam in 2001 to visit the spot where Jeff died. --Publ.