Hitchhiking Home from Danang

Gerald McCarthy enlisted in the Marines at 17 and volunteered for Vietnam. After the war he went AWOL, then to civilian jails and military brigs and finally to a Navy psychiatric ward, where he witnessed patient-attempted suicides. Medically discharged, he returned home to upstate New York and piecework in shoe factories. Written in two voices—one lucid, one dreamlike—his memoir delivers a jump-cut narrative of his troubled adolescence, his wartime experiences and his struggle to come unstuck from his own life.

Poet Gerald A. McCarthy lives in Nyack, New York.

Gerald A. McCarthy
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 249
Bibliographic Info: 19 photos, appendix, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2024
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9284-5
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5044-9
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Part I. Marking Time
1. Dancing in the Dark 6
2. Like a Rolling Stone 14
3. What About Me 17
4. Miles from Nowhere 20
5. One Fine Day 21
6. Will the Circle Be Unbroken? 24
7. Keep On Pushing 29
8. Here, There and Everywhere 31
9. New Beginnings 35
Part II. Going South
10. Standing in the Shadows of Love 38
11. Sunny 40
12. Chain of Fools 42
13. Where Do We Go from Here? 44
14. Have You Ever Seen the Rain? 47
15. Darkness, Darkness 51
16. Who’ll Stop the Rain? 53
17. Carry That Weight 57
18. Slippin’ into Darkness 60
Part III. Nothing for Nothing
19. Four Days Gone 64
20. Running on Empty 74
21. When You Awake 78
22. New Beginnings 80
Part IV. In the Zone
23. I Walk the Line 82
24. I Got Dreams to Remember 86
25. If You Want Me to Stay 89
26. There’s a Hole in the Future 92
27. Goin’ Out of My Head 94
28. Song of the Wind 96
29. Catch the Wind 102
30. My Back Pages 104
31. Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing 107
32. New Beginnings 109
Part V. Waking Up
33. Slippin’ into Darkness 112
34. Working Class Hero 116
35. Going Down Slowly 118
36. Be True to Your School 121
37. Homeward Bound 123
38. Where Did You Sleep Last Night? 124
39. Sweet Melissa 125
40. The Other Side of the Sky 129
Part VI. Back Stories
41. Going in Circles 134
42. A House Is Not a Home 140
43. Estate 144
44. Dedicated to You 148
45. Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child 151
46. Hurt 155
Part VII. Falling Forward
47. In a Sentimental Mood 160
48. Winter in America 171
49. (Who Wrote) The Book of Love? 186
50. Pavane 188
51. Rivers of My Fathers 191
52. When I’m Gone 197
Epilogue: Collateral Damage 199
Music/Playlist Credits 228
Books: A Short List 230
Index 233

• “A good read… The diverse 52 chapters mix well together into a tasty jambalaya of a book.”—VVA Veteran

• “McCarthy has dug deep into his past to produce an astounding volume of literature. Hitchhiking Home from Danang … reveals the inner world of many war veterans that home folks haven’t a clue about.”—Portside