Hitchhiking from Vietnam: Seeking the Ox

This is a funny and intelligently written memoir of a Vietnam veteran's search for self. It is an account of Vietanm veteran Richard Chamberlin's meandering journey to fulfillment during the 60's and 70's based on an actual cross-country hitchhiking trip the author took when he was 30 years old. The story starts in 1975 in the liberal enclave of Madison, Wisconsin. While the war in Vietnam has just ended and Chamberlin has been out of the service for five years, he is still trying to put his life back together. The first chapter begins in a run-down Madison laundromat where the author meets a mysterious character named Ken-Adi whom he hopes might be his guru. The two of them decide to take off on an adventure together and hitchhike to San Francisco. The trip becomes a spiritual quest and a window into the past. The central part of the book is a series of flashbacks of Chamberlin's experiences with the Navy's Seabees in Vietnam. While there he wrestles with the absurdities and paradoxes of that war just as today's veterans will have to deal with the contradictions inherent in the current war in Iraq. At the end of the book the author has a conversation with an old friend who inadvertantly helps him put the pieces of his life back together as they watch horses cavort in a corral at sunset on the outskirts of Ft. Collins, Colorado.