Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Heading for a Total Eclipse

Author: John Philip Drury

Narrator: Jeffrey Kafer

Format: Unabridged

Length: 48 mins

Language: English

Release date: 07-01-15

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Personal Memoirs

Publisher's Summary:

In this touching and humorous essay, John Philip Drury recounts coming of age during the Vietnam era. With a low draft number and an exit from college looming, Drury faces the imminent possibility of fighting in a war that he opposes. In the meantime he tries and abandons a dream to become a songwriter, labors mightily to lose his virginity, and looks to the adult world around him for models of what he most wants to be - an artist. Heading for a Total Eclipse takes a look at a young man's attempt to maintain his integrity during a turbulent era and in the face of impossible choices.

Ploughshares, the literary magazine of Emerson College

Members Reviews:

Very good

Very touching coming of age story, very well written and flowed very well. Reminded me of being at that age.

Woven story

I was a little kid during the time that this story took place and I was immediately taken back to that time in my life. I remember the draft card burning and the protest as well as those who felt they had a duty to go. It was a good look back at characters going through all of this woven in with the total eclipse.

Terrific short memoir set against the backdrop of Vietnam--Now I've got to read the book it's from!

This review is for the audio version, though I've also read the text version. I first listened to this on a long road trip this past summer, which was fitting as the frame story for this personal narrative a road trip the author went on with a friend to see a total eclipse in 1970, and I've since re-listened to it on short a shorter trip. This vignette is the opening chapter of Drury's memoir The Bad Soldier, so says the blog of Ploughshares, who published the ebook version. As I mentioned, the story about the overnight road trip to view the eclipse is only the frame of the story. Like memory, this short memoir skips around in time flashing back to events leading up to the road trip and foreshadowing ones that happen afterwards. The structure is never confusing, though. Instead it makes the narrative richer because of all the connections we're able to see. The emotional crux of the story is the decision the author faces about whether or not to enlist during Vietnam. I won't tell you any more except to say that I'm glad this excerpt is an excerpt because, while it is complete and rich in itself, I want to keep reading and find out what happens after the end of this story. Except, I will say this, I absolutely love the maxim young Drury develops for himself, and I'm adding it to my personal file of favorite quotations.