The Big Buddha Bicycle Race transports the reader to upcountry Thailand and war-ravaged Laos late in the Vietnam War. On one level a cross-cultural wartime love story, it is also a surreal remembrance of two groups who have been erased from American history—the brash active-duty soldiers who risked prison by taking part in the GI anti-war movement and the gutsy air commandos who risked death night after night flying over the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Brendan Leary, assigned to an Air Force photo squadron an hour from L.A., has got it made—until the U.S. invades Cambodia and he joins his buddies (and a few thousand Southern California co-eds) who march in protest. First Sergeant Link ships him off to an obscure air base in upcountry Thailand, but even then Brendan figures he’ll be working in an air-conditioned trailer editing combat footage for the 601st Photo Squadron, a useful detour on his way to Hollywood. He expects to return unscathed from what he knows is a screwed-up war, only Brendan is wrong.
The Rat Pack needs cameramen and Leary is soon flying at night over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in a secret air war that turns the mountains of Laos into a napalm-scorched moonscape. He realizes he is trapped, his heart and mind divided between awe at the courage of the warriors he flies with and pity for the convoys of Vietnamese soldiers he sees slaughtered on the ground. As his moral fiber crumbles, he is seduced by a netherworld of drugs, booze…and a strung-out masseuse named Tukada. The Big Buddha Bicycle Race is a last gasp of hope, a project he dreams up that will coincide with Nixon's arrival in China, win hearts and minds in rural Thailand—and make him and his underpaid buddies a pile of money. The start of the race is glorious! Entrants from every Thai and American unit on the base mean big bucks for Leary’s syndicate. Except there’s a problem. Tukada has disappeared and Leary’s sidekick insists her brother is a terrorist...