Publisher, Bantam Doubleday Dell (1997)

Once in a lifetime, a man may find himself in a desperate battle for everything he holds dear. But that all-out war has come twice for John Fortunato. Once for his country -- and now to save his hometown and the woman he loves...

Twenty-five years ago John Fortunato was a soldier in Vietnam, fighting in the crushing darkness of the tunnels of Cu Chi, from which the Vietcong launched their deadliest operations. When he got back to his hometown of Elk River, Illinois, he secretly re-created those hellish tunnels. Partly a memorial, partly a kind of exorcism, they now lie hidden beneath the town's peaceful streets. John traded his M-16 rifle for a Nikon camera and built a career as a successful photographer. He thought he had put the war and the bloodshed behind him, but a powerful new enemy has other plans for John Fortunato.

On a quiet April night, Fortunato witnesses the brutal sidewalk shooting of an innocent man. The vicious crime is but the first assault in a struggle that will erupt into a full-scale battle for control of Elk River, a struggle that will divide neighbors and tear families apart. On one side is a tough, beautiful labor lawyer; on the other is a man who will stop at nothing to control the entire town. And on the front line is John Fortunato, whose secret tunnels will provide the battleground for his own war, a war that revives the killing grounds of Cu Chi in a way he could never have imagined.

From the terrible intimacy of tunnel combat below the steaming jungles of Vietnam, to the brutal battles on the streets of the American heartland, to the unyielding courage of a man and woman prepared to sacrifice everything to make a dream come true, Digger is a harrowing story that breaks all the rules.