GODS GO BEGGING

An ambitious, complex story tracing the efforts of several men and women to put the horrors of Vietnam behind them—and to find a way to curtail the violence convulsing contemporary America. Jesse Pasadoble, the protagonist, is a defense attorney in San Francisco. Hardened by his experiences in Vietnam (having survived the horrific battle for an Army listening post on an unnamed hill), and further hardened by his years defending the violent and the hapless, Jesse finds himself inexplicably touched by a young black man accused of the murder of two women (one of them Vietnamese) who ran a unique restaurant in a poor neighborhood. Jesse decides not only to try to save the youth but to educate him and open him up to the possibilities of a life spent outside the cycle of violent acts and lethal revenge. VÇa (The Silver Cloud CafÇ, 1996, etc.) takes chances, forcing probability to the breaking point in an attempt to create a special resonance. The two women who were murdered, it turns out, both lost husbands at the hill Jesse helped defend: one a comrade of Jesse’s, the other an NVA soldier. The Hispanic chaplain assigned to the post, driven mad by the experience of battle, had wandered off into the jungle and later spent years in a state of amnesia before settling among the homeless in San Francisco. He’s the one who eventually comes forward to help clear Jesse’s client. It’s some measure of VÇa’s storytelling power that the tale, despite its improbabilities, and despite the overwhelming (and often jarring) eloquence of many of the characters, is gripping and intriguing, and its portrait of racism at home and abroad persuasive. VÇa even manages to make Jesse’s redemption, which hinges on an event that could only be described as a miracle, seem both stirring and just. For those willing to suspend disbelief, then, an instructive and angry portrait of the deforming psychological effects of violence and poverty.