"If there is another fiction quite like it in subject matter and straightforward, unembellished manner of telling, I do not know of it."
--Doris Grumbach, from the Foreword
So much has already been written about the Vietnam War-both fiction and nonfiction, by authors ranging from former grunts to former Cabinet members-that it comes as a surprise that the subject hasn't already been covered from every possible angle. It comes as another surprise to realize, with all the attention currently being spent on the issue of gays in the military, how little fiction has dealt with gays in the American forces in Vietnam.
The Innocent, by first novelist Robert Taylor, deals exactly with this issue. It is a significant contribution to the literature of the Vietnam War and to the more general field of gay literary history. It is a bold book, an American-Vietnamese homosexual love story that challenges the notions most Americans (including the novel's protagonist) hold dear about what's fair in love and war.
Captain Matthew Fairchild is a desk officer in Saigon. A good soldier and a loyal American, he believes he is protecting the world from the threat of Communism. During the course of this tense, tender novel, Matthew has his eyes opened to his homosexuality, the dark side of America's presence in Southeast Asia, and the horrors of war, which climax with the massacre of an entire Vietnamese village. The Innocent is about a young man finding out for sure exactly who he is and what that entails in terms of pleasure and responsibility, crime and conscience.
About the Author Robert Taylor was a Captain in the U.S. Army assigned to the Pentagon from 1963-1966 and to Vietnam at Army Headquarters in 1967. He was awarded a Bronze Star in 1967. He has been the editor of Transportation U.S.A., assistant editor of Music Educators Journal, and deputy editor of America Illustrated, a Russian-language magazine distributed in Russia. He lives in Blue Hill, Maine. The Innocent is his first novel.
