Mastering chess

The world is playing chess, and you're playing checkers.

Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

Good Vietnam War novels are still being written, even if those who experienced the war are getting a bit long in the tooth, and Robert Dugoni's The World Played Chess (2021) is one of them. As the title suggests, it's a complicated world out there, in peace as much as in war.

Dugoni tells three related stories at the same time. One is the journal kept by William while a marine serving in Vietnam. Other marines die around him, and later his guilt from what he did in the war is compounded by the fact that he survived and they didn't.

After the war, he works with Vincent, a recent high school graduate, on a construction crew. Vincent makes his own mistakes, faces his own dangers and takes his own risks even without a war. Meanwhile William shares a little about his Vietnam experiences.

In the third story, Vincent is a middle-aged adult with children of his own when he receives William's journal in the mail. Meanwhile, Vincent's son. Beau, is also just out of high school and struggling into manhood in a dangerous, complicated world.

With parallel stories of boys becoming men and facing many of same struggles, Dugoni weaves a compelling story about growing into manhood. This novel was recommended to me by a woman, so obviously its message is not for men alone.