COVER PAGE

TITLE PAGE

EPIGRAPH

What Was Lost

I sing what was lost and dread what was won,

I walk in a battle fought over again,

My king a lost king, and lost soldiers my men;

Feet to the Rising and Setting may run,

They always beat on the same small stone.

—WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

PRAISE

PRAISE FOR

LOST SOLDIERS

“A STRONG AND UNUSUAL NOVEL . . . a . . . tale of intrigue, adventure and mystery . . . a well-plotted story about Americans and Vietnamese in Vietnam more than a quarter century after the war’s end. You want to know what will happen next: You will not be disappointed . . . there is powerful nostalgia for lost youth, friends dead, forever-missed possibilities of life . . . A WAR STORY AND A LOVE STORY . . . Webb knows what he writes about . . . His rendering of Americans in modern Asia is reminiscent of Joseph Conrad’s portraits of Westerners in the East a century ago . . . Lost Soldiers pays homage to the Vietnamese and to the Americans whose lives were entangled and, so often, lost in that long-ago and far-away war.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Webb has a sniper’s eye and a lover’s heart and is at his best here.”
—Playboy

“Along the way to writing a very fine adventure novel, James Webb has written a book with A GREAT—PERHAPS DEFINITIVE—DEPICTION OF THE VIETNAM THAT AMERICA LEFT BEHIND . . . a chilling look inside the Stalinist regime . . . powerful fiction, working on multiple levels . . . a pulse-pounder that is filled with wise experience and shrewd observation. . . . Throughout Lost Soldiers Webb is making profound points—about honor and betrayal, about loss and hope.”
—The Asian Reporter

“A MASTERPIECE, one of the most poignant and powerful novels of this generation . . . Not only a beautifully realized literary triumph but also a crackling page-turner . . . [a] seamless blend of mystery, intrigue, history and culture. . . . Jim Webb did not set out to write a healing book, but that is what he has done. I suspect Lost Soldiers can bring my country together after years of debate and division—and it took a warrior to write it. You will come away a different person after you’ve read it.”
—Walter Anderson, chairman and publisher, Parade

“Captivating . . . unforgettable . . . A mystery, but also a statement about America’s adventure in Vietnam and its enduring power over both veterans and victims.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“James Webb’s new novel paints a portrait of a modern Vietnam charged with hopes for the future but haunted by the ghosts of its war-torn past. It captures well the lingering scars of the war, and exposes the tension between the dynamism of a new generation and the invisible bondage of an older generation for whom wartime allegiances, and animosities, are rendered no less vivid by the passage of time. A novel of revenge and redemption that tells us much about both where Vietnam is headed and where it has been.”
—Senator John McCain

“CRACKLES WITH AUTHENTICITY.”
—The Kansas City Star