Cracker!: The Best Dog in Vietnam (review)

Cracker starts out as a beloved pet, but when hard times force her family into a no-pets-allowed apartment, she's donated to the U.S. Army. There the German Shepherd becomes the partner of Rick Hanski, a seventeen-year-old volunteer preparing to fight in Vietnam, who finds that behind Cracker's aggression and stubbornness lies a gifted and loyal tracker and alert dog. Once in Vietnam, the two struggle to learn the ropes but excel at a range of missions, including a secret incursion into Cambodia. When Rick takes a hit that means he's sent back home, he's more concerned that Cracker disappeared in the incident, and he moves heaven and earth to try to find his dog and then get military permission to bring her home as well. The book is a strange mixture: it's part classic mid-twentieth-century dog story, complete with gee-whiz enthusiasm and accessibility, modest anthropomorphism, and a general absence of deep reflection, and part candid war story that's pulling no punches about the disposal of the dogs upon the army's pullout and the often-bloody fates of both the U.S. soldiers and their enemies. That's a blend that could well appeal to readers (and reluctant readers in particular), however, especially once the book picks up pace as Rick and Cracker arrive in country and begin to do their work; Kadohata keenly evokes the nervous tension of the young dog handler on a mission, reading his dog with the same focused intensity that she reads the scents, hoping to prove his dog's merits and to keep his followers alive. Rick may be a boy in age but the book, like the army, treats him as a man, another aspect that will please young readers. The book deviates from fact on some of the dog material, including a romantic dog-story ending for Cracker herself; Sherlock's Letters from Wolfie (BCCB 6/04) gives a more realistic account. Most readers would rather the humans bear the hard truths anyway, though, so they may forgive the inaccuracy for the satisfaction.