The Life of Kim and the Behavior of Men: Human Bondage in the After-market of War

by Rod Davis

Overview

Winner of FIVE AWARDS in 2024

 

1 Silver Award, Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY),  2025, Military/Wartime Fiction

2 Honorable Mention, Forward Indies 2024, War and Military Fiction

3 Finalist, American Fiction Awards, American Book Fest,  2024, Military Fiction

4 Finalist, Author of the Year 2025, International Impact Book Awards

5 Winner, International Impact Awards, June 2024, Contemporary Fiction

In 1970, Second Lieutenant Thomas Jefferson Hobbes, fresh out of college and ROTC, finds himself sent to South Korea instead of the expected Vietnam. His arrival at Kimpo Air Base turns his destiny from a war zone to another face of warfare, the destructive interactions between soldiers and camp followers, aka men and women, that are a part of conquest and occupation throughout history and around the world. Utterly unprepared, he follows trails and carves his own, his soul and sense of humanity falling to levels of hell that even Dante would find daunting.

 

A beautiful young Korean working girl, known only as Miss Kim, becomes Hobbes’s partner and his guide into deception and danger. Pushing through his 13-month tour, he becomes a part of the thoughtless, predatory subculture that binds him to the love of his life, but at an impossible price.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781956440805
Publisher:	Madville Publishing
Publication date:	07/16/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	300
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Award-winning writer Rod Davis is the author of East of Texas, West of Hell, the sequel to South, America, described as “a triumph of Southern noir.” He is also the author of Corina’s Way, winner of the fiction prize in the inaugural PEN Southwest Book Awards for 2000-2005, and of American Voudou: Journey into a Hidden World, selected as one of the “Exceptional Books of 1998” by Bookman Book Review Syndicate. A long-time journalist and magazine editor, he is a member of PEN America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and was formerly on the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle. He served as an Army first lieutenant in South Korea in the Vietnam Era.

Editorial Reviews

2024-04-29
In Davis’ novel, a soldier falls in love with a sex worker while stationed in 1970s South Korea.

Thomas Hobbes is deployed to South Korea during the Vietnam War. The men in Hobbes’ camp feel the separation between their current lives and what they refer to as “the World,” which lies beyond occupied Korea and their military post: “It was a concept—broad, vague, and sacrosanct.” The soldiers are trying to stave off “the Fear,” an intangible entity never fully explained but that seems to refer to an ever-looming anxiety. A few of the methods Hobbes and his friends use to shelter themselves from the Fear include alcohol, drugs, and “yobos”—a Korean term of endearment used by the soldiers to refer to sex workers. Hobbes meets Kim, a South Korean woman who plies that trade; though Hobbes makes a concerted effort to deny his deepening feelings, he and Kim fall in love. Later, he discovers that Kim is pregnant and that she deals drugs on the side for some dangerous men, leading to horrific consequences. Davis’ story is well paced, its descriptive prose deftly conveying the setting and the culture of life in the camp: “Whiskey at thirty cents a glass, opium and heroin in cigarette packs, switchblade knives sold by amputees and hustlers in the alley, dice slammed against mud walls…” The author is unafraid to highlight the flaws of his protagonist. For example, when Hobbes first grows close to Kim, he feels guilty, wanting to set himself apart from the other soldiers who use racial epithets orwhoreto describe such women. But once Hobbes and Kim do have a deeper bond between them, he struggles to commit to her because she is not of “the World.” Davis’ story may not have anything truly new to say about war or occupation, but he presents an impressive and engaging tale of love in a rough setting.

A moving and well-written war drama.

Kirkus Reviews