Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Matterhorn | 2009 | Karl Marlantes | Buy |
| 2 | Deep River | 2019 | Karl Marlantes | Buy |
| 3 | Cold Victory | 2024 | Karl Marlantes | Buy |
Karl Marlantes’s novels include Matterhorn (2009), about a young Marine in Vietnam; Deep River (2019), following Finnish immigrants in the Pacific Northwest; and Cold Victory (2024).
Matterhorn took Marlantes over thirty years to write and revise. When it finally appeared, it drew wide praise as one of the best novels about the Vietnam War. The story follows Second Lieutenant Waino Mellas and his Marine company through brutal fighting near the Laotian border, and it pulls no punches about the waste and confusion of combat.
Deep River changed direction entirely, telling a multi-generational saga about Finnish immigrants who arrived in the Pacific Northwest logging country around 1900. Cold Victory (2024) is his most recent novel. Across all three books, Marlantes writes about people tested by extreme circumstances, whether on a jungle hillside or in the timber camps of Washington state.