Rolling Thunder

by Mark Berent, Putnam (Other)

Overview

They were America's brave men-seasoned veterans and young daredevil pilots with dreams of glory in the air: Court Bannister, an Air Force captain overshadowed by his famous father, driven to prove his worth to his comrades-and himself; Toby Parker, the brash first lieutenant who gambled his innocence in the flames of war; Wolf Lochert, the Special Forces major who ventured deep into the jungle to rescue a downed pilot-only to discover a face of the enemy for which he was unprepared.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780515101904
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/01/1989
Edition description:	REVISED
Pages:	1
Product dimensions:	4.20(w) x 6.72(h) x 0.95(d)

What People are Saying About This

Stephen Coonts

The fighter pilot's war -- you love it and hate it at the same time, and Mark Berent writes it that way.

W E. B. Griffin

Rolling Thunder is terrific -- a novel of exceptional authority that hits like a thunderclap. A decorated Vietnam pilot, Mark Berent knows planes and men and battle, and he whirls them around in a story of uncommon strength. I can't wait for the next book.

Editorial Reviews

Berent is a decorated Air Force pilot who served three tours in Vietnam. His first novel is essentially a series of vignettes and anecdotes loosely structured around the yearlong tours of duty of Air Force Captain Court Bannister and First Lieutenant Toby Parker, with a ground-force counterpoint in Special Forces Major Wolf Lochert. Principal villains are the Washington policy-makers who send men to die in a war they are not allowed to win. Within this intellectually unsophisticated black-and-white framework, however, Berent's laconic, jargon-rich narrative evokes moods eclipsed by later and more spectacular events. Set in the mid-'60s--the last stages of the professionals' war, when career soldiers were still able to believe in what they were doing--the story focuses on ground-support operations over the south of Vietnam. This was a war the Air Force had been unprepared for and was uninterested in fighting, a war of obsolescent fighter-bombers flown by men who had dreamed of becoming astronauts, and of the Forward Air Controllers, the daring FACs, who called them in on almost-invisible targets. Yet as the novel ends, its protagonists intend to return for another tour of duty, which has come to overshadow survival in their minds. Fortunate is the country, Berent tells readers, where such men wear its uniforms; may they never again be so betrayed. The message is no less powerful for being predictable. Literary Guild and Military Book Club alternates; author tour. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly