The Reluctant Messiah

In the first of a Trilogy, Jack Armstrong is born with powers he doesn't understand. He experiments with them, including sometimes discovering them in circumstances he would much rather not be in. Living with a brutal father who does not want him and a mother who dearly loves him, he is forced to navigate his life on the family farm that he loves by gaining his father's respect. Here he would have stayed, but as fate would have it, he is conscripted into the army which takes him to Sydney, where he meets his best friend who had been a small-time drug dealer. On entering the underworld, he uses his powers with violence to become the boss of the biggest crime group of heroin trafficking in Sydney, before he is sent to the Vietnam War. His journey to Vietnam would take him through Cambodia, Thailand, and into Burma in the Golden Triangle. Confronted with a world of violence and murder, he must choose between his sanity and greed.