Dog Soldiers is a vastly disturbing if not horrific vision of contemporary America. Scanning the emotional wellbeing of the nation, Stone envisions a decidedly bleak landscape inhabited by a sordid collection of life's "soldiers" unceremoniously waging a losing battle against their own undoing. Passing judgment as if pronouncing death, Stone presses the reader to look at the world around him while simultaneously pressing him to look closely at himself. Unfortunately, the result is a sad commentary on history and the lack of promise in the generation of the 1970s.

The novel tells the story of an American journalist in Vietnam who schemes to smuggle heroin into the United States aided by his wife in California and an ex-Marine accomplice. As the plan goes askew, Stone creates a harrowing struggle for possession of the drug while investigating the psychological motivation and interrelationships of the major characters.

Having...