In the fall of 1968, the deadliest year of the Vietnam war for Americans, Lisa Thompson, a back-to-the-land hippie living at her family's Vermont farm, is cutting firewood when a stranger shows up to warn her the FBI might be investigating her brother, Chris, a Boston anti-war activist who was drafted. Chris reports as ordered to an Army base where he refuses induction and is taken away unconscious in an ambulance. The Army says he accidentally fell. Lisa doesn't believe it and heads to Boston to discover the truth, but Chris dies before she can find out what happened to him. In a quest for justice, Lisa faces two of the most powerful institutions in the world-the Army and the FBI. But the Vietnam war and the draft have transformed America into a combat zone where anti-war and civil rights protesters are under attack as enemies of the nation. With the help of a combat veteran, Lisa uncovers a labyrinth of lies and murders, and confronts her brother's killer. From Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Lyn Bixby, inspired by the death of his college classmate in Vietnam, The Pacifist is a debut historical suspense thriller about standing up to power gone bad.
The Pacifist : A Novel