By Michael Jennings

Graduating from college at the height of the Vietnam War, Peter Dandridge is in love with a medical student, Stephanie Ames, and longs to splice his life with hers. A football injury should shield him from the draft, and his mother threatens to reserve a cemetery plot if he seeks combat duty. Still, guilt and a longing to confront danger pull him into the war.

He ends up in Vietnam as a self-described schoolmarm in jungle fatigues. In a fellow soldier named Rabinowitz, Peter finds a target for his frustration.
A spy plot and a Viet Cong ground attack cut short Peter’s tour of duty and send him home with a black mark on his service record, along with lingering questions about Rabinowitz. Stephanie prods him to seek answers, and with a small showing of soldierly valor, he does. Those answers prove strange, horrific and—at least by Peter—wholly unforeseen.

What They Are Saying About Ave Antonina

“Raising disturbing questions about America’s involvement in Vietnam and what the American government was willing to overlook in order to compete with the Soviets in the exploration of space, Ave Antonina effectively brings back the days when the Vietnam War and the race to be the first nation to set foot on the moon competed for the headlines.”

—Chris Helvey, Editor in Chief, Trajectory Journal

and author of Snapshot

“Ave Antonina is thought-provoking, insightful, and entertaining, an original novel that is sure to satisfy readers on many levels.”

—Michael Embry, author of New Horizons