Title: Against the War
Description: AGAINST THE WAR follows the intertwined lives of four friends, rowing team mates, who graduate from college at the height of the Vietnam War and struggle to make decisions about the war and the military draft. Two become involved in the war, one as a combat pilot and one as a medic. The other two of the four friends, in trying to avoid the war, become involved in the “war on poverty,” the anti-war movement, and the counterculture that arises from the anti-war movement. In the course of the four and a half years covered in the novel, the four men also meet and court the women who become their eventual spouses. These women become part of the story as they position themselves with respect to the war and the women's liberation movement. In the course of this, also, the eight young people of the novel find themselves within an ever growing phenomenon involving thousands of American youths like themselves reacting to the same far-reaching dynamics of the counterculture and the war. "Menge's book reminds me of both Theodore Dreiser and John Dos Passos. It's a vast panorama with enormous attention to detail." David Willson, Vietnam War Fiction, Books in Review - See more at: http://www.worldlibrary.org/wplbn0003466738-against-the-war--a-novel-of-the-vietnam-war-era-by-menge-roland.aspx?#sthash.ZGwzLVRR.dpuf
Places: St. Paul, Chicago, North Carolina, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Kentucky, Navajo Reservation, Gallup, Winslow
Time periods: 1967-1971