Mission on the Ho Chi Minh Trail

In this narrative of jungle combat, Richard L. Stevens, a U.S. Foreign Service civilian is guided on the Trail by the ex-Viet Cong guerilla Viet, master of deep-forest war. Stevens, an ex-Marine but a neophyte here, is drawn ever deeper into the jungle—and into combat—by his obsession with the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Viet, a captured VC forced to lead Americans and South Vietnamese on missions back to his home base on the Trail, becomes Stevens’s teacher and friend, but possibly he is a VC still, a double double agent.

Stevens’s powerful and poetic prose and his complex examination of the Viet Nam War elevate his Trail journey into the realm of myth. A universal theme unwinds here: the mythic hero-journey between life and death is a trail traveled by all.