July 2016 Heroes on the Edge Group Read: First Blood by David Morell *Spoilers*

[Danielle The Book Huntress , Literary Adrenaline Junkie]

First Blood is our July group read! Enjoy and discuss.

[Justin]

Anybody reading First Blood. This is one of my favorite books. Looking forward to hearing what everybody thinks.

[Jim]

I am trying to get to it, but I have too many books to read for too many groups this month & I still haven't started any of them.

When I first read this, I didn't know anything about the Special Forces save for the John Wayne movie, "The Green Berets" (1968)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gre...
PTSD was still commonly called "Battle Fatigue" & the Vietnam War was increasingly unpopular. I was looking forward to being drafted for it in a few years. Long hair, especially in rural areas, was a reason for cops to hassle a person, too.

I grew up in a rural area where the law was pretty much a force unto itself. For example, we had paper licenses back then & the drinking age for beer was 18. I was still 16 when I carefully swapped a couple of numbers on mine with a razor blade for drinking purposes & got a duplicate for driving. One night, I stopped in a bar that also sold carry out on the side & the local sheriff came out of the bar to stop it. He knew my step-father & that I wasn't old enough, so took the fake license away. No courts or anything, just, "I'm going to talk to your father about this."

So, I found this book fascinating & horrifying. I could easily see the situation that developed. It made perfect sense to me. It was also really cool just how badly they underestimated Rambo, especially the sheriff, a Silver Star recipient.