Posted by By Bob Frump
Ha! Comes now Rod Nordland, one of my personal heroes and our mightiest modern-day war correspondent, fallen now, hurtling forward on a surgical gurney rattling toward the OR and all but certain death.
Hear him as he yells Yeats out into the void:
“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world!
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed!”
That scene alone not enough to interest you in Nordland’s philosophy of life as revealed in his new autobiography and memoir, “Waiting for the Monsoon”?
Okay, try this.
Nordland at the Afghan-Pakistan border in the mountains. Two lovers huddle in hiding as the police, the army, reporters, and angry family members close in. The young kids face certain death and honor- killings if caught.
Nordland beats them all – the police, the army, the murderous families, the pack of journalists chasing the story. He finds the kids first. Then he must think it through.
Stay detached as a journalist? Score the scoop and let them die? (A better story in some ways?)
Or save them?
Hand over to them the thick wad of cash most war correspondents carry to get themselves out of jams? Tell the kids to run?
Gentle Reader, forgive the breathless cliff-hangers, but the excess is justified because, as Arthur Miller writes: “Attention must be paid to such a person!”
“Waiting for the Monsoon” is at one and the same time a master class in journalism, an unflinching look at death, a love story, a superb chronicle of human growth and a supercharged adventure tale that unfurls internally and externally as Rod Nordland, grows and learns to know first his job – and then his heart.
In his life, Nordland flirts seriously with crime and the dark side, overcomes much and harnesses the anger prompted by an abusive villain of a father into a psychological cold fusion device that powers the rest of his life as a good guy – and makes impossible accomplishments real.
Having given you the sense of it, I’ll leave it to you to enjoy it and say little else. This is a book review – not the book summaries that pass for reviews these days.
The review is this: Read this book.
This is a journey as conceived by Dickens, enacted by T.E. Lawrence. It should be paired with the soundtrack from Indiana Jones.
Yet it is humbly told with a story arc that will break and remake your heart, shatter and reshape your soul at least twice over.
Yes, yes. Full disclosure. I’m biased. I’ve known, admired and worked with Nordland for 50 years – and aspire to his levels and skills. Alas for me, there’s no one better in the business. This is how that happened. Join me in giving thanks for that and check out this book
Wonderful Mr. Frump! No one could have said it better.