Showing results by author "David Rabe" in All Categories

When playwright/novelist David Rabe was a young Vietnam vet, he followed boxing with awed intensity. Men like Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, and Jerry Quarry took on mythical proportions as they not only endured, but gained fulfillment, even joy in the ring. Now, looking back, Rabe finds that their fates, like his own, have unfolded.

Eight years ago, Mary and Freddy Gale's young daughter was killed by a drunk driver on her way home from school. The driver, a young man named John Booth, was sentenced to eight years in prison. Unable to absolve their own guilt, the Gale's marriage dissolves and Mary takes their two remaining children away from Freddy. Quenching his thirst for vengeance with alcohol, Freddy Gale waits for John Booth's release, planning his revenge. He becomes a man obsessed.

Girl by the Road at Night is a spare and poetic narrative about a young soldier embarking on a tour of duty and the Vietnamese prostitute he meets in country. Private Joseph Whitaker, with Vietnam deployment papers in hand, spends his last free weekend in Washington, DC, drinking, attending a peace rally, and visiting an old girlfriend, now married. When he arrives in Vietnam, he happens upon Lan, a local girl who submits nightly to the American GIs with a heartbreaking combination of decency and guile....