Narrated by the ghost of soldier killed in Vietnam, the novel tells the story of Paco Sullivan, the lone survivor of a firebombing raid, a man who is something of a ghost himself. In a small Texas town Paco takes a job as a dishwasher and tries to make a simple life for himself even though he's haunted by his ghastly memories and often viewed by those around him with incomprehension or even disgust. Larry Heinemann's first novel, the follow-up to his Vietnam war memoir, CLOSE QUARTERS, won the National Book Award in 1987.