Eddie LeFever hated high school. The year was 1965 and he could barely sit at a desk through his last few months as a graduating senior. When his best friend Johnny was denied a college football scholarship, the two buddies enlisted in the Marines. It seemed a fine way to start an adult life. Their country was not at war and a multi-year service stint seemed like it might be a useful way to start a career path after four years of high school. That is, until that fall and new orders were issued and the two new Marines found themselves on a boat to Vietnam."We'll show up and show some force and then go home," Eddie said to Johnny. Instead, the two soldiers passed through a gantlet of horrors that would lead one to his death and the other missing in action. Based on the Telegony, the last book of Homer's Epic Cycle, Heavy Bitter Dust recounts the search of a Vietnamese son for his American warrior father, a father he never knew and who never knew him. When the long search ends, there is only one possible resolution, one as tragic as it is inevitable.