Following the success of his nonfiction bestseller,
Jarhead, Anthony Swofford turns to his first novel,
Exit A. Severin Boxx is a 17-year old football star on the American military base, Yokota, just outside Tokyo. He's falling for Virginia Kindwall, the half-American and half-Japanese daughter of the base commander. Virginia likes to think of herself as Bonnie (of Bonnie and Clyde) and has becomes associated with petty criminals. Severin fails in his hopes to straighten her out and instead aids in her dealings with Tokyo's criminal underworld, not far from the base via Exit A of the Haijima rail station. It can only end badly. Fifteen years later, Severin lives in San Francisco and is unhappily married. He decides he must find Virginia and that part of him he lost when he was just 17.
Exit A has received mixed reviews with the San Francisco Chronicle saying, "Far from falling short of devotees' high expectations,
Exit A ultimately proves that there is a lot to love about Swofford's first expedition into the realm of fiction."
