Things We Do to Make it Home

"Beverly Gologorsky's novel proves once again that good fiction is the truest telling of the history of our times. The Things We Do to Make It Home uses the power of story to illuminate an untold tragedy. It goes beyond the terrible effects of Vietnam on its veterans to the widening devastation on the lives of their lovers, wives, and children. Rendered with vivid immediacy, this first novel is a work of rare, revelatory impact." --Helen Yglesias The Things We Do to Make It Home captures, in clear, unadorned prose, the legacy the Vietnam War left to the wives and children of the men who fought in it. Beverly Gologorsky's brilliantly constructed, deeply human novel charts the fates of six couples--the men who came home profoundly altered and the women who strove to create for them a safe haven yet in the end could do little more than bear witness to their pain. In 1973, stateside and seemingly whole, Rooster, Frankie, Jason, and the other vets begin getting on with their lives. Some marry, find jobs, buy houses. But beneath the surface activity, there's a dangerous fault line. Twenty years later, the war is still with them: Rod and Emma face the loss of their house and everything they have worked for; Rooster lives on the street, alienated from his wife, Millie, and their rebellious daughter, Sara-Jo; Frankie returns to Vietnam to put his ghosts to rest. The Things We Do to Make It Home invites comparison with the work of Tim O'Brien and Bobbie Ann Mason, but its 1990s setting completes the literature for our time. Told in a spare yet evocative, absolutely original voice, this is a story of deep hungers, the brevity of solace, and the limits of devotion to help those we love.

Review :
Advance praise for Beverly Gologorsky's THE THINGS WE DO TO MAKE IT HOME "In The Things We Do to Make It Home, Beverly Gologorsky shines a brilliant and disturbing light into a time and place too long left in shadows by American literature. With great compassion and insight, she opens up to us not only the psychic realm of returned Vietnam vets but the even more neglected stories of the women--wives and daughters both--who loved them." --Susan Faludi "Beverly Gologorsky is on intimate terms with the mysterious reservoirs of feeling her men and women bring to the task of making it home from a war that won't let go. She also knows the worlds in which they move, the barrooms, beauty shops, city parks at night, hospitals, and airports, and renders them beautifully. But it's her extraordinary sensitivity to the burden of history that Vietnam's veterans and their families carry in the marrow of their lives that marks The Things We Do to Make It Home for the shortlist of postwar classics." --Carol Brightman "Beverly Gologorsky's remarkable The Things We Do to Make It Home rings with truth. This is forceful writing about the undertow of the Vietnam War and other undersides of American life that I've seen evoked nowhere else. It's a gripping read." --Todd Gitlin "A poignant reminder of the ravages our country suffered from the saddest of all possible wars." --Carolyn See "A wrenching and original novel on the wages of war and the damage done by wrecked men to the women and children who want to love them." --Gloria Emerson