Lyn Bixby
Award-Winning Writer
Now Available For Purchase at Bookstores Everywhere!
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 named Johnny Dollar shows up to warn her the FBI might be investigating her brother, Chris, a Boston anti-war activist who was drafted. Chris reports as ordered to an Army base where he refuses induction and is taken away unconscious in an ambulance. The Army says he accidentally fell. Lisa doesn’t believe it. She heads to Boston to discover 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. The Vietnam war and the draft have transformed America into a combat zone where anti-war and civil rights protesters are under attack as enemies of the nation. With the help of a Vietnam combat veteran and Johnny Dollar, Lisa uncovers a labyrinth of corruption, lies and murders, and confronts her brother’s killer. From Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist 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.
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 named Johnny Dollar shows up to warn her the FBI might be investigating her brother, Chris, a Boston anti-war activist who was drafted. Chris reports as ordered to an Army base where he refuses induction and is taken away unconscious in an ambulance. The Army says he accidentally fell. Lisa doesn’t believe it. She heads to Boston to discover 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. The Vietnam war and the draft have transformed America into a combat zone where anti-war and civil rights protesters are under attack as enemies of the nation. With the help of a Vietnam combat veteran and Johnny Dollar, Lisa uncovers a labyrinth of corruption, lies and murders, and confronts her brother’s killer. From Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist 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.
A Quest
for Justice
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 named Johnny Dollar shows up to warn her the FBI might be investigating her brother, Chris, a Boston anti-war activist who was drafted.
Chris reports as ordered to an Army base where he refuses induction and is taken away unconscious in an ambulance. The Army says he accidentally fell. Lisa doesn’t believe it. She heads to Boston to discover 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. The Vietnam war and the draft have transformed America into a combat zone where anti-war and civil rights protesters are under attack as enemies of the nation. With the help of a Vietnam combat veteran and Johnny Dollar, Lisa uncovers a labyrinth of corruption, lies and murders, and confronts her brother’s killer.
From Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist 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.
A compelling novel about the ravages of a war that tore into the heart of America.
What People are Saying About The Pacifist
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.
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.
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. Yours to discover now, it seems inevitable that this book will soon become a popular television series.
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About Lyn
At his grandfather's typewriter
Lyn Bixby protested against the Vietnam War before he received his military draft letter weeks after graduating in 1969 from Colby College in Waterville, Maine. He passed his physical and was ordered to join the Army, serving at Fort Dix, N.J., Fort Bliss, Texas, and at a number of bases on Okinawa before he was discharged because the Army couldn’t turn him into a soldier.
He found a job at a suburban Connecticut daily newspaper as a newsroom clerk, was promoted to reporter and spent most of his career at the state’s largest newspaper, The Hartford Courant, working primarily on its special projects desk as an investigative reporter focused on corruption. Some projects gave him opportunities to dig into issues raised in his debut novel, The Pacifist. During his newspaper career he received a range of prestigious writing awards, including a shared Pulitzer Prize.
He and his wife Debbie were married in 1979 and live in northern Vermont. They have two sons and three grandchildren.
On a five-day canoe trip.
Lyn and his wife Debbie join friends Anita Rosencrantz and Bob Tutwiler and an estimated 1,000 other protesters on June 14, 2025 at the “No Kings” demonstration in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, against actions taken by the Trump administration.
Lyn's Other Writing
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