What strikes me as an essay in the middle of Tim O’Brien’s set of related fictions (with some alternate versions of events)
The Things They Carried, "How to Tell a True War Story" raises many questions about what he calls “story truth” and “happening truth.”  One of the lesser quandaries considered in that powerful essay is: Once you've learned to tell a true war story, how do you tell any other kind?

O’Brien’s first novel (Northern Lights, 1975) was set entirely in Minnesota, and there are three very compelling fictions set in Minnesota or northern Iowa within the 1990  The Things They Carried (On the Rainy River, Speaking of Courage, The Lives of the Dead), whereas the Vietnam stories in that book are based on what O’Brien (who was born in 1946) saw in 1969-70 in the 3rd Platoon of A Company, 5th Battalion, 46th Infantry Division, in Quang Nai province, Republic of Vietnam.

In the Lake of the Woods (1994) begins with the disappearance of Kathleen Wade from a lakefront house in northern Minnesota (on the Lake of the Woods which fills most of the triangle above the 49th parallel jutting into Canada). John Wade, a rising star in the Democratic Farmer-Laborer (DFL) Party and the lieutenant governor of the state of Minnesota has just resoundingly lost a (1986) primary bid for an open US Senate seat.

Beyond that, which is all I knew before reading the book, anything about what happens as the relatively distant (1967-68 and earlier) past floods over the recent past the story’s present could be accused of
plot spoiling,
though what “really happened” in the relationship and disappearance of the Wades is unknowable. What happened in the election in which Wade had been far ahead in the polls only gradually becomes clear (other attributes and events are also built up in a spiraling narrative). The investigator knows that he is not going to solve the mysteries, but builds conjectures and sorts through evidence in the form of many interviews, the things that were left behind, quotations from books about living with a Vietnam veteran, official inquest testimony, magic manuals, and historical documents from the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord.

The different possibilities of what might have happened as well as the inventory of stuff John Wade possessed are very much congruent with O’Brien’s approach to telling true war stories in The Things They Carried. His Vietnam experiences aid him in understanding responses to constant danger from invisible enemies, but the Vietnam set piece (broken into multiple parts, intercut with John’s political career and post-defeat stay on the lake) is that of a platoon of C company a year earlier than O’Brien’s tour in Quang Nai province, with a lot of documented “happening truth.”

The Minnesotans are fictional characters, though I don’t doubt that O’Brien aimed for “story truth” for these characters and their actions. He sketched a number of characters who are believable Minnesotans to me (none of whom says “You betcha,” which only happens in “Fargo,” the Coen brothers’ movie, though Minnesotans do say “You bet”).

The laconic sheriff, his nearly rabid deputy, the potentate who lent the Wades the cabin, and Kathleen’s sister are vividly sketched. So is the character of John, whose alcoholic father hung himself during John’s childhood after years of viciously undermining taunts. John worked on magic tricks, which led him to being called “The Sorcerer” by his platoon mates. It seemed he could make himself invisible, like the Vietcong, and he believed that he had erased part of his past, as many a narcissistic politician believes they can (John Edwards, for instance).

(end plot-spooler warning)

The book was a page-turner for me as well as providing much to think about. Though not as much a knockout as The Things They Carried (which I’d advise anyone delving into Tim O’Brien’s fiction to read before it), and somewhat frustrating a mosaic construction of hypotheses, testimonies, and aphorisms, I would recommend In the Lake of the Woods as a major work by a major contemporary American writer. (O'Brien received the National Book Award in 1979 for his surrealist Vietnam book Going After Cacciato.)

©2010, Stephen O. Murray

My epinions about other classic books on the war in Vietnam and its aftershocks (the second is most directly relevant):

Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War
Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War
Michael Herr, Dispatches
Duong Thu Huong, Novel Without a Name
Gustav Hasford The Short-Timers  (and the softened movie version Full-Metal Jacket)
Larry Heinemann, Close Quarters, Paco's Story, Black Virgin Mountain
Neil L. Jamieson, Understanding Vietnam
Andrew Lam, Perfume Dreams
Tim O'Brien, Going After Cacciato, The Things that They Carried
Andrew X. Pham, Catfish and Mandala, The Eaves of Heaven
Robert Stone, Prime Green

Library of America, Reporting Vietnam II

Recommended: Yes