The Summer Ho Chi Minh Died

In the summer of 1969, as America’s intervention in Vietnam builds toward its ugly climax in Southeast Asia (and at home), a group of eighteen-year-old boys and girls in a small midwestern town find themselves facing a bleak immediate future. Narrator Joe and his friends Frank, Benny, Dallas, Moon Man, Tina and Carol, smoke dope, drink, and party because they don’t know what else to do. They are not searching for justice or spiritual enlightenment or anything noble. They barely grasp that they’re hurtling toward the dead ends of their lives.