Death Coming Up the Hill

It’s 1968, and war is not foreign to seventeen-year-old Ashe. His dogmatic, racist father married his passionate peace-activist mother when she became pregnant with him, and ever since, the couple, like the situation in Vietnam, has been engaged in a “senseless war that could have been prevented.”

When his high school history teacher dares to teach the political realities of the war, Ashe grows to better understand the situation in Vietnam, his family, and the wider world around him. But when a new crisis hits his parents’ marriage, Ashe finds himself trapped, with no options before him but to enter the fray.

A Unique Novel in Verse: Told entirely in haiku, with each of the 16,592 syllables representing one American soldier lost in Vietnam in 1968. Coming of Age in 1968: Seventeen-year-old Ashe navigates first love, the draft, and a nation at war with itself and others. A Nation and a Family Divided: Ashe is caught in the crossfire between his war-hawk father and his peace-activist mother—a home life that’s a battlefield of its own. An Impossible Choice: When a family crisis pushes his parents past the breaking point, Ashe must make a devastating sacrifice to protect the ones he loves.