I think it is important to look into the mind of the author Alfredo Vea Jr. to see what he was thinking while he wrote this novel. In doing so I was able to find to two interviews in which Vea explains his time in Vietnam as well as his experience post war as a criminal defense attorney. However, in both of these interviews he doesn’t elaborate on how much this experience played a part in the novel. That being said it is interesting to see how much his own life models the novel. It would be interesting to see if there was any interviews of his experience in Vietnam. In the interview conducted by the Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine Vea explains how he was a combat soldier. His descriptions of the horrors of war correlate to the descriptions of dismemberment and devastation – which the author describes as a Gothic frieze (page 194)- during Jesse’s flashbacks to his time of war.

http://faculty.deanza.edu/helfmansuzanne/stories/storyReader$1857

http://articles.latimes.com/1993-06-28/news/vw-8079_1_poor-people