Piper in the Night

Dennis Short thought his tour of war was over - but now another war has taken its place.

Short, a Navy medical corpsman stationed in Hawaii after a tour of Vietnam, is looking forward to his two-week sojourn to the island of Kahoolawe - the uninhabited island just off Maui that the Navy uses for target practice. He's there as the medic for a team of forward observers whose job it is to coordinate the bombing, strafing, and shelling of Kahoolawe, and all he anticipates doing is working on his tan, watching the fireworks, and, on days off, getting in a little fishing and hunting on an exclusive, untamed preserve.

But this trip is not like the other visits to Kahoolawe that Short has enjoyed. From the first day, he is plagued by an oppressive sense that he is being manipulated. And beginning then, the first night, he slips into a dreamlike world of half-human creatures, creatures of myth who tempt him, frighten him, force him to become part of their battles with one another.

Kahoolawe becomes the stage on which ancient, archetypal conflicts play out. The daytime world is full of bombs and unnerving companions, and the herd of feral goats that roam the island behave with an uncanny aura of strategy and calculation.

The nighttime world is more frightening still.

Short has no control over his circumstances, no clear understanding what the players want, and no idea how to remove himself from the violence that surrounds him.