Release Date: January 6, 2026
Size: 6x9
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-57869-211-8
eBook ISBN: 978-1-57869-212-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025918194
Booksellers and Libraries: Order Info Here or at Ingram.

SYNOPSIS

A compelling novel about the ravages of a war that tore into the heart of America.

In the fall of 1968, the deadliest year of the Vietnam war for Americans, Lisa Thompson, a back-to-the-land hippie living at her family’s Vermont farm, is cutting firewood when a stranger shows up to warn her the FBI might be investigating her brother Chris, a Boston anti-war activist who was seriously injured when drafted. Chris had reported to an Army base where he refused induction and was taken away unconscious in an ambulance. The Army says he accidentally fell. Lisa doesn’t believe it and heads to Boston to uncover the truth, but Chris dies before she can find out what happened to him. In a quest for justice, Lisa faces two of the most powerful institutions in the world—the Army and the FBI. But the Vietnam war and the draft have transformed America into a combat zone where protesters are under attack as enemies of the nation. With the help of a civil rights lawyer, a newspaper editor, and a combat veteran, Lisa navigates a labyrinth of lies and murders to confront her brother’s killer, and keep his legacy alive.

From Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Lyn Bixby, inspired by the death of his college classmate in Vietnam, The Pacifist is a debut historical suspense thriller about standing up to power gone bad.

Praise

“Written by a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist, this fast-paced crime novel is set in the era of hippie communes, draft dodgers, and protests against the Vietnam War…it seems inevitable that this book will soon become a popular television series.”

–Jerry Griswold, author of Feeling Like a Kid

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“Lyn Bixby manages to accomplish something that is enormously difficult to pull off: to write a novel whose narrative thrust drives multiple storylines forward like a detective crime thriller. The dilemmas the novel’s characters face moved me because the moral choices that drive the novel’s actions and story lines are very real to me.”

–Basil T. Paquet, poet, Vietnam War veteran, cofounder of First Casualty Press, publisher of and contributor to Winning Hearts and Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans and Free Fire Zone: Short Stories by Vietnam Veterans

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“Lyn Bixby has penned a rocking tale of the tumultuous 1960s, wrapped in a mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end. His compelling characters hold plenty of lessons for our own time as they try to resist the forces of war and repression without losing their way.”

–Lawrence Roberts, author of Mayday 1971

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“A novel about the death of a pacifist at an Army base in 1968, it fueled a rebellion in New England against the Vietnam War that would spread swiftly and lead to shocking mysteries and secrets and deaths. This anti-war thriller, with fictional characters resisting the war surrounded by a factual background, will keep you reading through the night. Bixby’s skills as an investigative reporter are on display throughout the action. A very impressive first novel. Here’s hoping another one is on the way!”

–Mike Waller, Pulitzer Prize winning former senior editor at The Courier-Journal, former editor of the Louisville Times and other newspapers, and former publisher and CEO of The Sun of Baltimore

Meet the Author

Lyn Bixby was drafted within weeks of graduating in 1969 from Colby College in Waterville, Maine. After leaving the Army, he became a newspaper journalist and received a range of awards, including a Pulitzer Prize. He and his wife Debbie were married in 1979 and live in Northern Vermont. They have two sons and three grandchildren.