In his memoir Jim McGarrah, poet and writer from southern Indiana, examines in detail his peacetime life growing up in Princeton, Indiana; his indoctrination into the cult of the Marines as a fledgling warrior in basic training at Parris Island in South Carolina; and his introduction to the life of a combat soldier in Vietnam observing bulging body bags at an air base's morgue in Da Nang and going to his first assignment armed with a malfunctioning M-16 rifle. Many years later, the former private first class, serial number 2371586, realized that for him, home had become "the jungles of Vietnam, the one place where life was at its best and worst simultaneously every minute of every day."