Death Zones and Darling Spies

In 1961 equipped with a mastera's degree from famed Columbia Journalism School and letters of introduction to Associated Press bureau chiefs in Asia twenty-six-year-old Beverly Deepe set off on a trip around the world. Allotting just two weeks to South Vietnam she was still there seven years later having then earned the distinction of being the longest-serving American correspondent covering the Vietnam War and garnering a Pulitzer Prize nomination.In Death Zones and Darling Spies Beverly Deepe Keever describes what it was like for a farm girl from Nebraska to find herself halfway around the world trying to make sense of one of the nationa's bloodiest and bitterest wars. She arrived in Saigon as Vietnama's war entered a new phase and American helicopter units and provincial advisers were unpacking. She tells of traveling from her Saigon apartment to jungles where Wild Westa"styled forts first dotted Vietnama's borders and where seven years later they fell like dominoes from communist-led attacks. In 1965 she braved elephant grass with American combat units armed with unparalleled technology to observe their valoura"and their inability to distinguish friendly farmers from hide-and-seek guerrillas.Keevera's trove of tissue-thin memos to editors along with published and unpublished dispatches for New York and London media provide the reader with you-are-there descriptions of Buddhist demonstrations and turning-point coups as well as phony ones. Two Vietnamese interpreters self-described as ai??darling spiesai?? helped her decode Vietnama's shadow world and subterranean war. These memoirs at once personal and panoramic chronicle the horrors of war and a rise and decline of American power and prestige.