Parker's genre switch delivers novel of utmost gravity

We're told this on the first page of T. Jefferson Parker's powerful new novel about a Marine returning home from Afghanistan: "Nothing could kill him, so Patrick Norris did the killing, until they sent him from Sangin back to San Diego in the fall, a free man, twenty-two years old, wounded on the inside only."

As Patrick walks through the airline terminal in his uniform, people applaud, but he keeps his eyes straight ahead. His clueless brother says how glad he is that Patrick made it home alive. " 'I got lucky,' said Patrick. A hundred times he could have died, he knew - a thousand. You quit counting. God is luck."

Still, when a Korean War veteran thanks him for his service and warns that the America he's come home to - the people, the government - has all gone sour, Patrick rejects the cynicism. But events will soon make it difficult for him to maintain his optimism.

Parker's previous fiction earned him three Edgar awards and a reputation as one of today's most talented crime writers. With "Full Measure," he has left genre behind for something more ambitious. He explains that the book came about because his hometown of Fallbrook, Calif., abuts Camp Pendleton, and in recent years he met more and more Marines, sought out their stories and decided that he had to address their lives in fiction. The result is a novel that is not only supremely readable - that's true of all Parker's fiction - but is a moving, sometimes heartbreaking portrait of what often seems a lost generation.

Parker writes of the difficulties within Patrick's family and the even larger problems that afflict Fallbrook, population about 30,000, which the author sees as a microcosm for all of America.

Patrick's parents are good people at a hard time in their lives. The one-two punch of the recession and a fire that destroyed much of their avocado farm has them facing financial ruin. Patrick reluctantly agrees to help his father try to save the farm, although he'd rather pursue his dream of owning a charter-fishing boat. A bigger problem is Patrick's troubled brother Ted, whose life has been a long series of bad decisions. When Ted decides he needs a gun to deal with the enemies he imagines all around him, we see disaster ahead.

The town of Fallbrook is a mess. Its part-time mayor works hard to improve things, but she meets with opposition at every turn. A notorious racist is agitating for everyone's right to be armed in public. After a Mexican-American boy is killed trying to cross the town's main street, the mayor seeks a lighted crosswalk, but it's voted down by know-nothings who oppose spending on what they call the nanny state. Worst of all, evidence emerges that the recent fire that caused huge damage to the town, and took three lives, was arson. Fear of terrorism sweeps the town, and suspicion soon centers on a seemingly upright citizen whose main offense is being Muslim.

Patrick functions relatively well. A sudden noise can make him take cover and look for snipers, and he has flashbacks to the explosions that killed two of his friends, but he works hard on the family farm and at a job delivering pizzas at night. He even ventures a cautious romance with Iris, a reporter for the local paper. But when his Marine friends, also back from Afghanistan, join him and Iris for an evening, drunken brawls keep exploding. Drunkenness, depression, joblessness and sudden violence too often define the lives of these young men.

Patrick looks back on the war and sees friends he would have died for and friends who died for him. Beyond that he sees only senseless death. Some of his friends disagree; they think they helped the people of Afghanistan, even improved the world. But it grieves them that few Americans care about their sacrifices: "They wondered why it was all up to them, why the war felt like some bizarre excursion that only they were asked to take." Most of them, at least part of the time, wish they were back in combat, where goals were clear and courage valued.

Patrick wonders at one point who made the decision that so many had to die for nothing. But he and his friends are not political; it never occurs to them that politicians make the decisions to go to war.

There are elements of tragedy in Parker's story - for the soldiers and for the United States - but his ending is not without hope. Terrible things happen, but life goes on, as it will. It's heartening to read this fine novel, coming soon after John Grisham's equally fine "Gray Mountain." Here we have two popular novelists, known for genre fiction, addressing issues of the utmost gravity: how we treat our veterans, in "Full Measure," and how we have long treated coal miners, in "Gray Mountain." These are admirable novels, artfully composed and painfully honest. We're lucky to have them.

Patrick Anderson wrote this review for the Washington Post Book World.