Dog Soldiers (novel)
First edition cover
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| Author | Robert Stone |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Publisher | Houghton Mifflin |
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Publication date
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1974 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover & paperback) |
| Pages | 342 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 948202 |
| 813.54 74.11441 | |
| LC Class | PS3569.T6 418 |
| Preceded by | Hall Of Mirrors |
| Followed by | A Flag For Sunrise |
Dog Soldiers is a novel by Robert Stone, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1974. The story features American journalist John Converse, a Vietnam correspondent during the war, Merchant Marine sailor Ray Hicks, Converse's wife Marge, and their involvement in a heroin deal gone bad. It shared the 1975 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction with The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams (split award).Dog Soldiers was named by TIME magazine one of the 100 best English-language novels, 1923 to 2005.
The book was adapted as a film from a script that Stone co-wrote, titled Who'll Stop the Rain (1978), starring Nick Nolte.
Dog Soldiers deals with the fall of the counterculture in America, the rise of mass cynicism and the end of the optimism of the 1960s.
California has moved on from the Summer of Love to post-Manson paranoia. Converse, a once-promising writer now unable to do more than observe, waits for artistic inspiration as a correspondent in Vietnam. Symbolic of his moral corruption is his decision to traffic in heroin, which the 1960s counterculture never embraced as they did marijuana and LSD.
Converse involves a former friend, Ray Hicks, in the smuggling deal. Hicks will hide the heroin on the Merchant Marine vessel he works on when he ships from Vietnam to Oakland, California and deliver the dope to Converse's wife, Marge, in Berkeley. The novel's primary complication unfolds when Hicks arrives in the States and realizes that he was discovered before he arrived and is being aggressively followed. Unsure whether Converse was double-crossed by his suppliers or Converse himself betrayed him, Hicks elects to go on the run with the heroin, taking Marge as insurance. The novel's action follows Hicks and Marge's evasion of Converse and his suppliers, and Hicks's attempts to sell the dope, south through California to the desert.
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