The Frog Hunter: A Story about the Vietnam War, an Inkblot Test and a Girl, is a memoir that reads stranger than fiction.
The author takes his readers on a fascinating, often humorous, and emotionally moving journey from deadly Ranger missions in Vietnam, to betrayal by his superior officers at Fort Ord, to the inside of an Army psychiatric ward. With a chaotic mind, trying to make sense of the war, Stamper is in a desperate search for truth.
He turns to the hippie culture, attracted by their message of love and enlightenment. Unexpectedly, he meets a beautiful girl; the love of his life. The happiness that life now offers him is threatened by the war that consumes his mind and heart. He wants the girl and he wants a future. But how can he find his way back to normal?
Written in powerful prose, the story reveals how war wounds the soul, but then hope emerges, kindled within the tangled aftermath of trauma and loss.
Assessment:
Plot/Idea: In The Frog Hunter, Stamper takes his readers from his carefree high school days of burgers at the drive-in to the jungles of Vietnam, where every cracking twig may mean death is lurking nearby. Traumatized by his experiences in the war, Stamper returns to the States to find he no longer fits in anywhere, and encounters a bigger fight—to regain his mental health and find a purpose in the life he was one of the lucky few among his comrades to escape the Vietnam War with.
Prose: The Frog Hunter is beautifully written. T.B. Stamper is a writer who knows how to create atmosphere, has extraordinary descriptive powers, and is able to detail an inner landscape that is absorbing, sympathetic, and fully engaging.
Originality: While there are many war memoirs, this is a memoir written by a born writer, and that makes it unusual. Stamper doesn't merely recollect his experiences—he relives them on the page, and the reader is right there with him.
Character Development/Execution: Stamper has a keen eye for the telling detail and a still keener ear for dialogue. Even the minor characters are as vivid and real to the reader as they are to the author who knew them in life.
Date Submitted: January 04, 2022
Not every author can write beautifully about the hell of war. Writer TB (Bart) Stamper is one of them. He kept me turning the pages of his book, The Frog Hunter: A Story About the Vietnam War, an Inkblot Test and a Girl, straight through to the end and left me breathless in the process.
