John W. Irwin

John Irwin spent over 31 years in the military. He served with the Special Forces for the first half of his career. From there he went into the conventional Army and served another 16 years. Schooled in Special Forces Operations and Intelligence, Strategic Reconnaissance and as an Intelligence Analyst, the author has the background and experience to take readers inside the world of secret operations.

Many of the areas where John's stories take place have been visited by the author and thus he is able to provide detailed backgrounds to scenes readers could only imagine before now. Military procedures are based on the way things are actually done, then written by someone who experienced them firsthand. Add a BA in Sociology and Psychology to years of creative writing courses and you have a writer who can take you inside events and characters of a shadowy world few will ever see.

The issue of American prisoners of war in southeast Asia and elsewhere remains a festering thorn in our great society. As a free people, individual human life has great value up to a point, but that's not true everywhere. How our society views the POW issue says a great deal about where we are morally and politically in this nation. That is the key focus of The Power but this story is so much more than that.

Most Americans react to news on POWs in a manner very dependent upon their age and how much information they actually see on the subject. The main point of John Irwin's new book is to raise the issue of who controls that information, and does our society actually get all that it should? Irwin has the courage to ask, "Who has the power to forever hold the facts on POW status in a gray cloud of misinformation?" That is the power and someone has it, but who?

Synopsis

Several years after the war in Vietnam ended, the United States sent a small group of soldiers, a makeshift organization structured for deniability, across Cambodia to search for American Missing In Action and Prisoners Of War along the border area of Western Vietnam and Eastern Cambodia. That noble undertaking becomes something else altogether as this tale develops.

Make no mistake, The Power is not a war story. But in it, you will find an array of characters with deep human interest--people who are at war within themselves and with the system they can't begin to understand. If you're looking for fluff or a shoot 'em up, this book is not for you. On the other hand, if you want a story that transports you into the secretive world of intrigue, sacrifice and political ethics, this is the novel for you.

While All Quiet On The Western Front and The Bridge On The River Kwai captured the essence of human tragedy in two world wars, Vietnam came and went without a novel that exposed the core of its awful truth. This novel does. It raises the black banner of the POW issue to new heights, and for the first time, lays bare the ugly secrets of southeast Asia for all to see.

John Irwin knows about the power. This book IS about power--The Power--read it today.

---"Don't change a word." Gene Giese, a former POW, author and former Green Beret.

---"West Point has no text or suggested reading providing a better insight into the soldiers mind...such understanding is the cornerstone to successful leadership at the company grade level...The Power should be required reading for all Academy Cadets." Troy Prairie, West Point Class of 1988

---"It is a rare thing to find someone who really knows how to write and really knows the subject as well. You have that here." Berkely Press.

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