Michael Fletcher

As someone who has not read a ton of "war related" books, I did enjoy this one. However, I do think it is meant for a very specific audience - and there is nothing wrong with that at all. Those who are interested in the Vietnam war and also religion would be fascinated by the story that was told. I do wish there was a little bit more character development - especially with the Holy Man. Mainly because we never truly learn why exactly he left the priesthood to pursue other holy ideals. It was an interesting read overall.… (meer)

To Hunt a Holy Man by Michael Fletcher is a wonderful novel that related to my personal history, and my past and present interests. It expanded my current view of the world although I have had this view for decades.

The novel is about an officer in the US Army Military Police (MP) in Vietnam in 1971. First Lieutenant Frank X. Coletrane, Cole, enlisted in the Army and had his initial training at Fort Ord, California. That was my location of training and military specialty in 1971, except I was an enlisted man sent to Heidelberg Germany and later to Berlin never deployed to Vietnam. Fletcher’s knowledge of military jargon and attitudes is true to the military lives we lived in the early 1970s. I was raised a Catholic like Cole.

Cole’s MP mission was to go out in the field to capture and arrest deserters from wartime Vietnam. Thailand had R&R centers for soldiers that provided a break from their duties in Vietnam. On occasion, some military personnel would fail to return from R&R and desert in Thailand.

Cole is assigned a desertion case of a Catholic Chaplain, Father Mordechai Goodcut, who decided he had enough of the violence and evil of War and stayed in Thailand after his R&R to join the holy men in a remote Thai Temple. Cole eagerly sets out to track the Captain down and bring him back to the war zone. He must be accompanied by a Thai police officer to provide translations and arrest the deserter. Cole is a loner who is proud that he has never before failed in such an assignment. He resents the mandatory association with the Thai officer, Major Panthip Siriwongdee, but carries on with his mission. Deserters anger Cole because of his hatred of their immoral dereliction of duty, abandoning fellow warriors who are in harm’s way. His Catholic upbringing has left him with an undercurrent of righteous belief in action.

The novel becomes a wonderful confluence of war and peace, Catholicism and Buddhism, and individual violence and insight, as Cole enters the country and religious culture of Thailand. The fates of Cole, Mordechai, and Panthip play out in the fabled confluence of the Ping and Mun rivers near Ubon and the Bowonniwet Buddhist Temple above the waters.

What is the holiest characteristic in both religions that can resolve the dilemma of hunter and prey in a peaceful country so close to an international warzone? I enjoyed very much reading this well-written, informative, emotionally, and spiritually powerful novel.… (meer)

Let me get the negatives out of the way: i) there are some typos, such as "waive" for "wave", no apostrophe for possessives (at times), and "tenant" for "tenet", just to name a few; ii) as the rear cover mentions, there is "edgy language", with swearing on almost every page whenever the main character, Lt. Coltrane, is involved. This swearing could have been cut down to make it more bearable; and iii) some parts of the plot are left unexplained, like why his friend would do something terrible.

But the positives far outweigh the negatives. Michael Fletcher knows how to tell a story, and tell it well--his prose and storytelling got me involved in the story even when I flinched at the language. The title was intriguing, and was one of the reasons why I wanted a copy of the story. Indeed, this is Lt. Coltrane's hunt for a holy man, an army priest who has gone AWOL, but it becomes actually a metaphor for his own spiritual hunt for "holiness", so to speak. It becomes a story about his transformation from harsh, swearing military bounty hunter to a gentler, forgiven and forgiving man. The descriptions of the setting show that Fletcher knew or knows this area of Thailand well, and, even more so, he knows the culture and the language well, giving the story an authentic touch. I was pleasantly surprised by this story, with its spiritual underpinnings to a war story.… (meer)