~~A grief-stricken candy-striper serving in a VA hospital following her brother’s death in Viet Nam struggles to return home an anonymous veteran of the Great War against the skullduggery of a congressman who not only controls the hospital as part of his small-town fiefdom but knows the name of her veteran. A name if revealed would end his political ambitions and his fifty-year marriage. In its retelling of Odysseus’s journey, Revenants casts a flickering candle upon the charon toll exacted not only from the families of those who fail to return home but of those who do.
My late wife played the role of dark muse in my writing of Revenants. Strings of memory spliced one to another with her twine of tenacious insistence revealed in our rose-garden talks as we looked out across the black of the Pacific to where her Uncle Bunkle, Captain Richard Rees, United States Special Forces, died twelve miles southwest of a city then called Saigon in a country fated but to be for another sixteen months and fourteen days before it self-immolated atop that ever ascending gray ash heap of history. Died amidst a too-tentative truce while he and his unarmed men searched for Americans yet missing. Searched so they too might journey home. The first, and perhaps only, United States serviceman killed in action while deployed on an MIA recovery mission. Likely the last American combat death in our first war that even now only a few begrudging officials will admit where America was defeated, fewer still will confess as a mistake to have been waged at all, and none has yet conjured a credible explanation of what possible imminent threat its loss posed, beyond impairing their own political ambitions, to a vital United States interest justifying the slaughter of the lives of 58,220 Americans who had but begun to live theirs. You may think you have a memory, but those black-night revelations taught me it is memory that has you for it is only remembrance that can render dignity to death. Remembrance that haunts you and holds you and will not let go. Not ever.
~~
My Sleeper Read of the Year- Historical Fiction
By YodaMom on December 27, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition
War and it's aftermath have so many levels of destruction. The person on the battle field is just the tip of the iceberg. War scars families, damaging generations, and this family does not escape any of the aftermath.
This isn't a book I'd normally read, it's too real, too heartbreaking. It's about war, and the shadow of pain left in it's wake. I was drawn to it for some unknown reason I couldn't turn it down. So here I am feeling the dark devastation of the Vietnam War of those who didn't come home, those who did but left something behind and those here at home left to unscramble all the pieces.
We follow young girl, Betsy, through her maze of life and lose, her findings and the ties that were never broken. Betsy is an amazing character supported by an intriguing cast of people and their love, war, lies and hopes. The death of her brother in the Vietnam War changes everything at so many levels. She is forced into candy striping at a local VA hospital where she meets a mystery that will take her and her friends deep into a time long forgotten.
I really can't tell you more without spoiling the discovery for you. I did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. It will be with me for many years, haunt me. I finished this with with a need to visit a VA hospital and hold someones hand and listen. A beautiful book.
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