Back in the World — Book 2 of the Will He Make It Saga
The shooting has stopped. Willie Maykett has survived Viet Nam.
Now he has to figure out how to survive coming home.
Back in the World is Book 2 of the Will He Make It Saga, picking up where Permission to Kill leaves off. Before his nineteenth year is over, Willie is back in the United States—the place soldiers in Viet Nam simply called “the World.” But after ten months of living second-to-second as a combat helicopter door gunner, the world he returns to no longer feels like the one he left behind.
In combat, Willie had a mission, a crew, and a clearly defined enemy. Back home, there are no instructions for becoming an ordinary nineteen-year-old again. The instincts that helped keep him alive in Viet Nam do not simply disappear, and the experiences he once considered normal have left him struggling with memories, dreams, anxiety, relationships, and a growing sense that something inside him has changed permanently.
But Willie refuses to stand still.
He goes to college, discovers a passion for art, develops the Wizard identity, makes jewelry and sculpture, falls in and out of love, travels, takes chances, and searches for a life that feels like his own. Eventually, that restless journey carries him far beyond California and all the way to Australia.
All the while, Viet Nam remains with him.
Willie becomes determined to turn his experiences into something meaningful. He writes about the war, faces rejection, learns the publishing business from the ground up, and ultimately begins transforming his memories into the story that would become his first book. His art, writing, and relentless pursuit of an unconventional life become both a search for success and a way of trying to understand the soldier who came home.
Along the way are love and loss, travel and adventure, artistic discovery, marriage and relationships, veterans’ reunions, unexpected opportunities, questionable decisions, dreams of fame and fortune, and the continuing psychological echoes of combat.
Back in the World explores a side of war that does not take place on a battlefield: what happens after the soldier comes home.
For Willie Maykett, returning to America was supposed to be the beginning of the rest of his life. Instead, he discovers that leaving Viet Nam and leaving the war behind are two very different things.
The war is over—but Willie’s fight to find his place in the World has only begun.
Currently available FREE. Pricing is subject to change.
Back in the World is Book 2 of the Will He Make It Saga. For the complete journey, begin with Permission to Kill and continue with Permission to Live.