On this episode of Our American Stories, Karl Marlantes returned from Vietnam carrying memories he couldn’t share and questions he couldn’t shake. Like many who served, he tried to move on and focus on the next chapter of his life. For a long time, that seemed easier than explaining what the war had taken out of him.

Writing became his way through it. In Matterhorn and What It Is Like to Go to War, he began to put words to experiences that had stayed unspoken for years. Marlantes joins us to bridge the distance between surviving a war and living after one.

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