"Like the Appearance of Horses" by Andrew Krivak

 

This novel completes—and adds a great deal of depth to—Andrew Krivak’s stunning and award-winning Dardan Trilogy. Covering the life of Jozef Vinich and his two grandsons, Bo and Sam Konar, these three books—The Sojourn (2011), The Signal Flame (2017), and Like the Appearance of Horses (2023)—state their themes with frankness and power, cover their very memorable characters with charity and clarity both, and exhibit a rare, an ineffable, art, worth every moment you would devote to them. Andrew Krivak deserves the awards which have greeted his marvelous writing.

Like the Appearance of Horses takes its title from the second chapter of the Book of Joel, in a passage describing the unstoppable rush of an army that lays waste to the land. This quote enunciates the principal theme of the three books supremely well. War unites this family in heroism, devastating loss, and in tempering the character of all whom it touches.

This novel belongs chiefly to Sam Konar, Jozef Vinich’s second grandson, who, after a series of misadventures (chiefly, engaging in one too many drag races in his hemi head hot rod) is directed by the authorities that his only alternative is to enlist (in the mid-60s) in the Armed Forces.

What follows fills much of the book. Sam does two tours in Vietnam from ‘66 to ’72, near the end of which he is captured and winds up in the notorious North Vietnamese prison dubbed the Hanoi Hilton. There he is forcibly turned into a heroin addict by a creepy NVA prison guard, and must live by his wits—and extemporize from heroin fix to heroin fix—as he gains his freedom and returns Stateside. Throughout this ordeal, Sam retains his principles, even with their altered focus, and eventually reunites with his battalion commander from when he was in country.

In some ways Sam hoes the most difficult row of any of Krivak’s characters. Within the narrative, his experience wraps up the soldiering history of the Vinich and Konar men. Krivak treats Sam’s heroic re-emergence from addiction and imprisonment with blunt realism and steady sympathy. It is a harrowing, but rewarding, element of the novel, perhaps the book’s most important.

The Dardan trilogy will stay with me forever. Its beautiful prose, its comprehensive insider’s treatment of the natural world, and its oh-so-compelling characters make it a unique achievement. Take these books up and let yourself be carried along by a master.