The World Played Chess

In 1979 Vincent Bianco, a recent high school graduate, starts a summer job in construction in order to earn money for college. On the job he becomes friends with troubled Vietnam vet William Goodman, a man slowly disintegrating under the weight of horrifying memories. Vincent, an aspiring journalist, starts a diary in which he describes conversations with William, work experiences, and wild escapades with drinking buddies. When summer ends the two men go their separate ways. Then, in 2015, after years with no contact, Vincent receives a journal that William kept in Vietnam in the late 1960s. There, at a firebase outside Da Nang, he served as both a combat photographer and infantryman, facing death daily with fellow marines. Vincent has become a lawyer with a son about to graduate from high school and a 16-year-old daughter. He, too, will soon find that war is not the only place where loved ones die.