Broken Saint: A Story of a Brilliant Failure – Mark E. Zamen

Tom Wahrheit was a combat infantryman in Vietnam.  He was gay.  He was Mormon.  He was manic-depressive.  He could have been so much more…

From his first breakdown during the war through his attempts to navigate the rough seas of post-military life, Tom struggles to reconcile the different facets of his life. In Tom’s story, there are incidents of true ugliness, with no sugar coating.  There are also interludes of peace when Tom, for a time, knows true contentment.

Broken Saint is the penetrating, fictionalized account of a real man torn asunder by forces beyond his control, a very good man who should have been a productive and successful member of society.

Ultimately, this is a story of intolerance and how it is internalized and often prevents us from being true to ourselves.  In Tom’s case, the conflict between his sexual orientation and his religion, along with a poorly treated mental illness, erupted with catastrophic results.