"Green gives us a layered portrait of the life of a rural working-class southern man, scarred by his fighting in the Vietnam war. In this time of forever wars and festering economic inequality, Green's book does what good fiction can do--shine a light on the meaning and psychology of lives unknown by many."
—Jay Youngdahl, veteran, and author of Working on the Railroad, Walking in Beauty: Navajos, Hozho, and Track Work
."Armed with three books bequeathed from a Navy corpsman, a young man embarks on an exploration of finding peace – the kind of peace that is realistic, hard-earned, perhaps incomplete, but fundamentally necessary. An unflinching, raw, and ultimately gorgeous tale."
. —Laura Pritchett, winner of the PEN USA Award in Fiction
"Jack “Half-Pint” Crowe, reeling from two tours in Vietnam and the loss of his friend on the battlefield, returns to the oil fields and swamps of Louisiana determined to practice nonviolence in a world
where a simple act of kindness might get him killed. Mack Green is a skilled storyteller who never flinches in his depiction of the roughnecks and holy men that populate this story, and who never fails to show grace even when describing men’s darkest impulses. Frank’s Bloody Books is a gripping tale of resilience and redemption. I highly recommend it."
—Tiffany Tyson, author of The Past is Never
"As a fellow Vietnam veteran, Mack Green's Frank's Bloody Books pulled me back to my own deeply-etched memories surrounding that misbegotten war. Green's Jack 'Half-Pint' Crowe doesn't take one step wrong in recreating how so many young men have had to make peace with their wartime experiences as they try to slide back into some semblance of a normal life 'back in the world,' as we would say back then. I was fully absorbed."
—Dick Price, LA Progressive
"In Frank's Bloody Books, demons and saints deliver Jack Half-Pint Crowe into the elusive hands of peace."
— Barbara Richardson, author of Tributary, winner of Utah Book Award
About the Author
Mack Green is a member of Lighthouse Writers in Denver, Colorado. He is a retired neuropsychologist and current activist for progressive causes. As a young man he served two tours of duty in Vietnam with the U.S. Marines and received two purple hearts. He is a member of Veterans for Peace and a contributor of articles and essays on political and social justice to LA Progressive magazine. His home is in Colorado.