In the Year of the Rabbit, sequel to award-winning Big Buddha Bicycle Race, will be released on Amazon by Silkworm Book on October 15, 2021, preorders available on September 15, 2021.

IN THE YEAR OF THE RABBIT

Terence A. Harkin

Cameraman Brendan Leary survived the ambush of the Big Buddha Bicycle Race—but Tukada, his star-crossed lover, did not. Leary returns to combat, flying night operations over the mountains of Laos, too numb to notice that Pawnsiri, one of his adult-school students, is courting him. When his gunship is shot down, he survives again, hiking out of the jungle with Harley Baker, the guitar-playing door ++gunner he loves and hates. Leary is discharged but remains in Thailand, ordaining as a Buddhist monk and embarking on a pilgrimage through the wastelands of Laos, haunted by what Thais call pii tai hong—the restless, unhappy ghosts of his doomed crewmates.

     Year of the Rabbit, a story of healing and redemption, honors three groups missing from accounts of the Vietnam War—the air commandos who risked death flying night after night over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the active-duty airmen who risked prison by joining the GI antiwar movement, and the people of neutral Laos, whose lives and country were devastated.

“Terence A. Harkin makes a strong, significant, even surprisingly unique contribution to the large body of fiction that has emerged from the Vietnam War. For anyone who wishes to fully examine that most emblematic of American wars, In the Year of the Rabbit is essential reading.” —Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer-winning author of Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

TERENCE A. HARKIN was awarded the 2020 Silver Medal in Literary Fiction from the Military Writers Society of America for his debut novel, The Big Buddha Bicycle Race. During the Vietnam War he served with the “Rat Pack,” the USAF photo unit operating out of Ubon, Thailand, before going on to a long career as a Hollywood cameraman (M*A*S*H, From Here to Eternity, Seinfeld). He has returned often to Thailand and Laos.