I had just picked this up randomly from a Little Free Library, the synopsis on the dust jacket sounded interesting. I think the best way to describe it would be to say that it is a well written case study of the developmental consequences on children of the manner and environment in which they were raised. I know that sounds like an exciting read, but it actually is. There are a few places where the story seems to wander a bit, but overall I quite enjoyed it. ( )

The Volunteer begins with an enigma--a young boy is left abandoned at an airport, speaking an unintelligible language, with his father nowhere to be found. Who is this boy? How did he get here? Why? The answers to all these questions begin many years earlier with the story of Vollie Frade, who joined the Marine Corps during the height of the Vietnam War. We follow Frade through the jungles of SEA as he witnesses and partakes in the horrors of war, and their lasting aftermath. Salvatore Scibona has created a great work of modern literature, with his lyrical use of language to captivate the reader and his insights into the effects of war and the fringes of society.

Full disclosure: I received a free advance reading copy of The Volunteer through Goodread's Giveaways, and my rating is based on an uncorrected proof. The Volunteer will be available in bookstores on March 15, 2019. ( )

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The Volunteer by Salvatore Scibona is a generational saga, spanning about 100 years in which the effects of the Vietnam War are felt. Mr. Scibona is an award winning American author and writer of short stories.

A young boy is stranded at Hamburg Fuhlsbuettel Airport in 2010. He speaks no German and it seems as if he was abandoned.

Vollie Frade, nicknamed “Vollie” because he volunteered for the war instead of being drafted, forges his father’s signature to enlist instead of being drafted. Vollie just wants out of his home in Iowa and maybe even get a sense of who he really is.

In Vietnam, Volie meets Lorch, a spy who recruits him for a secret government operation in Queens, NY. Escaping from Lorch’s clutches, Vollie finds himself in New Mexico and in love with Louisa. Vollie also raises Louisa’s son, a violent teen, turned violent man who himself finds a life in the military and keeps on volunteering for tours of duty in the Middle East.

The Volunteer by Salvatore Scibona is a man’s novel. A book about men, the intimate relationships of one to himself, fathers and sons and how the traumatic effects of one generation affect the next, and even the one after that.

This is a sprawling story, which moves through geography, culture, and time in a deliberate, yet non-linear manner. The author allows us to see how men see themselves, and how the mind works allowing the characters to wander outside of themselves into places which do not exist.

The theme of disappearing seems to be a constant throughout this novel. Vollie seems to always try to disappear, he runs away to the Marines, shamed by his parents’ illiteracy, disappears from a secret government job, and even his family, but he always finds out, sometimes too late, that his disappearing act was often a decades long illusion. Vollie’s son also try to disappear, or make others disappear without really understanding why.

The book seem to ramble on at some parts, soliloquies of the characters thinking, or society’s reflection upon itself. Taken in context though, getting into the mind of a character including the artificial walls he builds around himself, his memories (real or not) as well as dreams creates a confidential relationship between the readers and the characters they are reading about. ( )