Every May, for more than a decade, an ever-increasing number of motorcyclists have made the "Run for the Wall," a cross-country journey from Southern California to the "Wall," the Vietnam war memorial in Washington, D.C. While the journey's avowed purpose is political -- to increase public awareness about those who remain either prisoners of war or missing in action in Southeast Asia -- it also serves as a healing pilgrimage for its participants and as a "welcome-home" ritual many veterans feel they never received.

Run for the Wall is a highly readable ethnographic account of this...