Every once in a while I come across a book about war and healing combat trauma that's new to me, and such was the case recently with one by Frederick Graham, called "The Bamboo Chest: An Adventure in Healing the Trauma of War," linked here. Unfortunately, the subtitle is a bit of a misnomer, unless you interpret it in a particularly specific way, in which case it works. But while it's far afield from actual "healing combat trauma," the reality is, it's an amazing true-life adventure story by someone who understands he's very lucky to be able to tell it.
For those of us who grew up reading books like Papillon, by Henri Charriere, who uses the opportunity of his captivity in and subsequent escapes from the notorious French prison, Devil's Island, to teach himself some things about himself, or any of the wonderful high-adventure historical novels by James Clavell -- Shogun, Tai-Pan, King Rat, Noble House, etc. -- Graham's book fits right in. It's a remarkable story about a guy whose dad was a Marine, who grew up in and around Vietnam and Southeast Asia, and then finds himself imprisoned in a South Vietnamese jail in the 1980s, with an absolutely frustrating roommate who he'd been arrested with and grows to really detest, for all the right reasons. Graham uses the opportunity of his imprisonment to reflect and make adjustments to his character, finds and nurtures his inner strength, and experiences several important insights from his childhood around the war in Vietnam that helps his adult self integrate itself more completely.
Unfortunately, though Graham is plenty psychologically adept with his own experience, because he wasn't actually involved in the Vietnam war directly as a soldier, the "war" in the subtitle is at a slightly larger remove than it was for the actual participants. However, as a story about man against the elements -- particularly man against society, and in some ways, man against himself -- it's really quite an exciting tale, and one worth reading.
