My River Home A Journey from the Gulf War to the Gulf of Mexico

"Popular culture teaches young men to enjoy war, to act it out as play and then don a uniform as a rite of passage into manhood. This warrior myth has long held a powerful place in our society. In My River Home, Marcus Eriksen, a former marine, tells his own story as a way of articulating the danger of this myth. It took ten years and an adventure down the Mississippi River to help him come to terms with his experience of war." "Eriksen grew up, alongside the other kids in his hometown outside New Orleans, playing war games and looking up to the veterans in town. At seventeen, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. While in college, as the first war in Iraq started, his reserve unit was called into battle. He finished his schoolwork, said goodbye to professors, family, and friends, and headed to the Middle East." "But real war is not like that heroic myth seen in the movies, and not everyone goes home afterward. Eriksen truly learned this lesson as he came upon the charred remains of hundreds of retreating Iraqis on what later became known as the Highway of Death. His experience with the dead and dying left him disillusioned, like so many veterans before him. In this environment, amongst endless deserts and oil fires, his unit left behind in Kuwait long after the U.S. declared the war over, Eriksen and a fellow marine dreamed of taking a classic American journey: sailing down the Mississippi River on a raft, living simply, with no responsibilities, no worries, and no war." "Ten years after returning from combat and soon after joining the antiwar movement against the second war in Iraq, Eriksen made the 2,000-mile journey, starting at the river's source, Lake Itasca in Minnesota, and travelling past his hometown and into the Gulf of Mexico. His vessel was not Huckleberry Finn's log raft, but instead a pontoon boat kept afloat by 232 empty soda bottles, recycled junk, and a dose of ingenuity." "My River Home is the story of one man's need to find the true heart of his country after losing faith in the warrior myth."--BOOK JACKET.Eriksen, Marcus is the author of 'My River Home A Journey from the Gulf War to the Gulf of Mexico', published 2007 under ISBN 9780807072752 and ISBN 0807072753.