THE THINGS WE DO TO MAKE IT HOME

An amiable debut tracks a group of Vietnam veterans through the 20 troubled years of peace that follow their return. Disturbed Vietnam vets unable to adjust to peacetime life have become so clichÇd that, as characters, they are nearly incapable of supporting a story on their own, but Gologorsky concentrates as much of her attention on folks back home as on the grunts themselves. The story revolves, somewhat elliptically, around Rod Devins, Rooster Barodin, and Frankie Bowers, three friends from New York who all served in the war together and came back to the city when their stints were up. Rooster marries Millie Reid, and the two have a daughter, Sara-Jo, before they break up. Rod marries Emma Hanson, and they have two daughters, Beth and Laurie. Frankie and Ida Connors date for a long time but never marry. Rod has trouble holding work, and he and his family eventually lose their house in the Bronx. Millie has just as much trouble with Rooster, which is why she throws him out and works as a beautician to raise Sara-Jo on her own. Frankie never really settles down at all, and eventually he decides to go back to Vietnam to see what has changed in the past two decades. We also learn about Sara-Jo’s troubles with her boyfriend Serge, Millie’s sister Lucy, who has an affair with Frankie’s homeless friend Sean, and the unhappy marriage of Ida’s brother Jason to Deede Cassidy. If it all sounds somewhat like a soap opera, it is—though most of the dialogue is hard-boiled enough (—Trackman, where they going to write your name? We—ve been falling down dead for twenty-five years. No walls for us—) to have been lifted from James M. Cain, and the atmosphere overall is bleaker than the Bronx. Rambling and a bit unfocussed, but nicely drawn all the same: Gologorsky’s portrait of urban despair is low-key and avoids the worst stereotypes of the genre.