Good for One Ride is a military novel written by Gary McGinnis. When Garrett boards the plane that will take him to Vietnam, it's after a somber and cold send-off by his father, and an emotional drive to the airport by his inconsolable mother. His father didn't look back when he walked up the stairs, and his mother was too distraught to wave goodbye as he stared out the airplane window. When the plane arrives at Tan Son Nhut airport, there's a huge crowd of people, milling and swelling and roaring, and as the new soldiers approach, they see that the crowd is filled with soldiers, their eyes filled with pain. Garrett realizes that in a year, if he survives, he'll be one of those men waiting anxiously for that trip back home.

Gary McGinnis' military novel, Good for One Ride, is set in Vietnam. Garrett's two years in college appears to have been factored into the army's decision to assign him to the Combat Engineers. He's relatively safe compared to those assigned to Infantry, but that specter looms over him throughout his tour, as a document called a levy could mean his immediate transfer. Reading Good for One Ride felt a lot like seeing a modern-day Dante's Inferno throughout Garrett's eyes. Garrett is apart, a spectator, and on his own for much of his tour, and he forms bonds with some of the Vietnamese children. He's terrified when the shelling starts at night, and sickened and horrified by the actions of the Vietcong and some of his fellow soldiers. I sat up all night reading this story. I didn't want to put it down until I knew what happened to my tour guide to hell. Good for One Ride is a modern classic war story, and it's a tale that's quite unforgettable. Good for One Ride is most highly recommended.

Good for One Ride by Gary McGinnis is billed as a work of fiction but reads more like a gripping memoir of the Vietnam War. McGinnis’ characters are so vivid and the events so real that distinguishing the narrative from reality is virtually impossible. McGinnis’ description is visceral and darkly riveting; there are times when readers will want to turn away from the images in Good for One Ride but will keep reading nevertheless, caught in the can’t-look-away chaos which characterizes the world in which McGinnis’ Private Garrett tries to make sense of the insensible.

McGinnis’ prose is punctuated by stark minimalist poems which introduce each chapter, creating the feeling of leafing through a forbidden, macabre photo album. The overall effect is mesmerizing: the poems set the tone for each chapter, with the subsequent narrative providing color and context to make the reader feel a part of the action as the story unfolds. Private Garrett, the protagonist of Good for One Ride, is a sort of Vietnam War Everyman; he is heroic in his will to survive and alternately comic and tragic in his efforts to comprehend the madness which surrounds him. Upon the solid foundation of this universal human dichotomy, McGinnis has carefully crafted Garrett’s experience to echo that of all enlisted men who fought to survive in jungles of napalm and blood.

As candid and as cinematic as Gary McGinnis’ Good for One Ride may be, one cannot help but feel that layers of even more unspeakable horror and devastation lie just beneath its surface - as if the storyteller has seen and experienced far more than decency will permit in the telling. In the end, readers will be grateful for this respectful distance. Good for One Ride is intense, overwhelming, courageous, and eminently worth reading.