Overview

Virginia Brackett seeks the truth about patriotism and loss as embodied by her father, WWII and Korean Conflict veteran Captain Edmund C. Roberts, from many historic sources - journalism, history texts, and military communique, as well as personal documents. Her memoir details her journey to come to know a father lost to an ideal of service. Over ten years of research, she learns about her family's slave-owning history and attempts to escape personal tragedy by moving from Kentucky to Missouri and into Illinois, of her parents' romance through aging scrapbooks, discovers a letter written by her father among a rare documents collection, and hears her mother's words read on a national broadcast. However, she discovers the real truth exists in the personal stories of those on the front, including her father, their lives permanently changed through service. Their voices educate her about Captain Roberts, an inspiration to troops, a war prisoner and an escapee, a decorated hero who met with General Patton, a ferocious infantryman. Killed by a sniper in the Korean Conflict, he would come to symbolize the shared values of his military community that became lifelong bonds for those who survived. As Brackett will learn, memories of her father run deep, and the extraordinary loyalty and devotion of those who remember Captain Roberts move her beyond feelings of betrayal that haunted her for decades. The crucial truth she discovers is that we must keep alive those lost by telling their stories. That is because their stories belong to everyone.

Full Product Details

9781620063446

Table of Contents

Reviews

Brackett's scholarship and attention to detail are extraordinary. ... an absorbing hybrid: a classical drama crossed with an archeological dig, only instead of pottery shards, burial mounds, and stone tools, it uses scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, letters, emails, and family lore to reveal a multi-generational personal history linking the past to the present. -- Tom Strelich -- The New York Journal of Books

Author Information

"Virginia Brackett, Professor Emeritus of English, retired in 2016 from Park University where she received varied teaching and service awards, including Faculty of the Year, 2013, Exceptional Services to Student Veterans. She served as a discussion facilitator for the 2017 NEH-funded initiative for veterans and their families, Planting the Oar, and as a member of the Kansas City Veterans Writing Team, presents writing workshops for veterans and their families. Her fiction placed second in the fall 2018 Owl Canyon Hackathon and was a finalist in the 2019 William Penn Foundation Early Childhood Book Challenge. Citations for her 15 books include The Facts on File Companion to 16th and 17th-Century British Poetry named Booklist ""Editor's Choice, Reference Sources, 2008""; Restless Genius: The Story of Virginia Woolf (2004), a recommended feminist book for youth by the Amelia Bloomer Project, 2005 (Feminist Task Force, American Library Association), PSLA (Pennsylvania State Library Association) YA Top Forty Nonfiction 2004 Titles, and ""Writers of Imagination"" series, Tristate Series of Note, 2005 and A Home in the Heart: The Story of Sandra Cisneros (2004), included in PSLA YA Top Forty Nonfiction 2004 Titles and Tristate Books of Note, 2005. Her articles have appeared in War, Literature and the Arts, Selected Papers from the Eighteenth Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf, The Wildean, Mosaic, Arachne, Women & Language, Notes and Queries, and Absolutism and the Scientific Revolution 1600-1720. Electronic books include Angela and the Gray Mare (children) and Girl Murders, a time-travel mystery, available at amazon.com."

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available