Keep Your Head Down: A Memoir

"We tend to write about what will not go away," Doug Anderson says in this candid, darkly humorous journey of self-discovery. Beginning in 1943, in the pre-civil rights South filled with tobacco and war stories, he recalls the difficult childhood that propels him into service in Vietnam. In 1967, having returned home deeply shaken by his experience as a combat medical corpsman, Anderson plunges into the heady freedoms and excesses of the sixties. His downward spiral--through booze, substance abuse, and sex--brings him dangerously close to a total breakdown. Finally, in a return group visit to Vietnam in 2000, he meets with former enemies now become writers and poets. Moved by the realization that "the last time I saw these people they were trying to kill me," Anderson confronts the past and calls upon a story--this powerful story--to rebuild a life.

Author: Doug Anderson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 07/01/2009
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.98lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.65d
ISBN: 9780393350135

About the Author
Anderson, Doug: - Doug Anderson, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, teaches at the University of Connecticut Greater Hartford Campus and lives in Hartford.