Jim McGarrah's The End of An Era is an insightful, heartbreaking and, at times, hilarious account of his struggles as a veteran in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. In his extraordinary wounding, healing blues song, this combat veteran sings for family, for lovers, for friends, and, always, in each line, for the soldiers gone in another era and the ones now dying in our own.

Memoir of a Vietnam Vet who returns home and tries to find his bearing, but butts heads with his father and friends and falls into a career of horse training.

In Jim McGarrah's third poetry collection, the present is often eclipsed by the ghosted past of Vietnam. These vital poems dwell in the inevitable privacy of being human, and it is in these starkly singular spaces-walking the dog, truckstopping for breakfast, closing the bar at 2 am, visiting Vietnamese children suffering the effects of Agent Orange-that McGarrah wrestles truth with music, grit and wry humor. As the poet sways between sobriety and stupor, bearing witness to the horror of being alive and the horror of going on, he too leads us through that slim midnight portal into rugged...