Desertion: In the Time of Vietnam - Hardcover

Todd renounced his American citizenship, which made him one of a handful of Vietnam-era deserters to have been ineligible for the general amnesty offered during Jimmy Carter's presidency--he could not even return to the United States for his mother's funeral. In this graceful memoir, Todd revisits what he calls his "absurd decision" to leave his country. Absurd, in part, because he later discovered he would not have been sent to Vietnam at all, but was instead slated to serve as a military journalist in Germany. For that decision he has many regrets, although he has clearly made a good life for himself in his adopted country. The cost was perhaps too great, though: "The effect of forced exile is felt not in any sudden tearing away but in the corrosive loss, over a period of time, of too many of the things that make you who you are." --Gregory McNamee

"Jack Todd has written a deeply personal, wholly compelling memoir about a time in American history that haunts us all. We can only be grateful for the power and straightforward honesty of his writing. This book will live." --Robert Kotlowitz, author of Before Their Time

"Desertion is an intensely moving, unique war story. In a voice that captures both the moral stalwartness and impetuousness of youth, Jack Todd delineates the hidden costs of the Vietnam war, how it not only tore apart the lives of the men who served, but equally derailed the life on one man who refused to serve." --Jill Ciment, author of Half a Life and Teeth of the Dog

"Jack Todd, in his remarkable, harrowing tale, shines light on an all too easy forgotten aspect of the Vietnam era, with the immediacy of a journalist and the lyracism of a novelist. Desertion is a fascinating read, all the more so for its being true." --David Rakoff, author of Fraud