The Bottom Line: A haunting, nerve-wracking tale set in the eerie landscape of the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ).
Tiger Season opens as U.S. Army veteran Eddie Profar is dying in a hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. After a day of visitors coming and going from his deathbed, a chill sends him into a vivid remembrance about the winter of 1968, when he served along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) dividing North and South Korea.
Author Gojan Nikolich illustrates the surreal experience of being posted at one of the world’s most volatile borders, complete with crippling cold, homesickness, paranoia, tedium and fear. In one of Nikolich’s most visceral scenes, Eddie and fellow soldier Lee, an often-stoned Korean-American soldier who is deeply interested in reincarnation and philosophy, investigate a secret tunnel created by the North Koreans. Along the way, they discover the body parts of several dead soldiers. The area smells like popcorn, and Eddie swears he sees deep furrows in the snow where bodies were dragged away. Eddie and Lee speculate that the men may have been devoured by a massive tiger.
As much as Tiger Season is about the psychological toll of a world on the brink of war, it’s also about obsession and power within micro-zones of influence. Accordingly, Eddie becomes enamored with Jia, a mysterious Korean woman who works at a club in town. Having survived tremendous trauma earlier in life, she’s now seen as the club’s primary “rainmaker” as a hostess who engages men in conversation, “gets them horny and worked up,” and then disappears. To Eddie, she’s simultaneously attractive and dangerous, accessible and elusive.
Due to a variety of circumstances, Eddie’s isolation grows. So too does his obsession with the tunnel. Is it connected to other passageways between the two countries? Are the North Koreans preparing an invasion? Should he believe the local folklore claiming that tiger victims turn into ghosts?
Nikolich, a military veteran and the award-winning novelist of The Gopher King and Ashes in Venice, proves himself to be a patient, highly observant storyteller. expertly blurring the lines between reality and imagination. Eddie’s increasingly wild thought patterns drive the plot, as the lines between reality and imagination are increasingly indistinguishable. But as his and Jia’s relationship evolves and deepens, readers will find themselves far more invested in the characters’ hopes and dreams than threats of war.
