Native Ground:
A Novel

Phillip H. McMath
ISBN 978-0-9824295-4-9
Phoenix International, Inc.
6 x 9
Paperback, 240 pages
$19.95

Lt. Christopher Shaw is scheduled to conclude his tour of duty in Vietnam in one month. He is also scheduled to lead an offensive against the Army of North Vietnam in five days. Having heard more than he has seen about warfare, he can only find one parallel within his experience: his hunting expeditions with his father, Conrad, and his black handyman, Barrel Bradford, in the south Arkansas delta.

Conrad Shaw, a powerful, self-made farmer and politician, is for his only son a model of hard work, fair play, and diplomacy. From Barrel, Christopher has learned to love the out-of-doors and to aspire to, despite his family’s wealth, a simple, noble lifestyle unencumbered by material acquisitions.

These lessons are uppermost in Christopher’s mind as he takes a weekend leave in Saigon and attempts to reassimilate himself to “the World.” His host, Monty Poltam, a former college roommate and now a high-level federal bureaucrat, has a vastly different perspective on war from Christopher’s. In an attempt to reconcile the two points of view as he returns to the front, Christopher stays his mind on the one constant in his life, his native ground.

He was educated in the public schools of Little Rock, Arkansas, and attended Hendrix College and, later, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, from which he received a double major in English and dramatic arts.

After college, he was commissioned in the United States Marine Corps as a second lieutenant and served in Vietnam as a tank platoon and company commander in combat during the years of 1969 and 1970. Separating from the Marine Corps after three years of active service, he was discharged with the rank of captain.

McMath has created a unique body of work in fiction, drama, and journalism. Native Ground is the first of a trilogy of novels that include Arrival Point and Lost Kingdoms for which he has won the Arkansiana Award for fiction. In 2009 McMath was inducted into the Arkansas Writers Hall of Fame.

He lives in Little Rock with his wife Carol and is planning to retire from the law in order to devote more time to writing.