A Long Way Home

I was so struck by this excellent piece of fiction that I hated for this unique book to come to its impacting close. The book was given to me by a Gold Star mother, that has literally become my mom after her son was killed in a helicopter crash in my unit in 1967. She is now 90 and we correspond very much. How she found this book about Vermont out in California is beyond me, but it was included in her last shipment of articles and artifacts about Gary's life, that she often sends on to me. There is much personal overlap in this book with my life, including my giving helicopter rides over Little Roundtop and hiking the Gettysburg battlefield in late afternoon hours after working there daily as an instructor pilot. I identified with Sam the carpenter/vet very much, as I have worked with wood and built many bluebird houses over the 14 years when I was doing that. I can't kill anything either, and have realized that fact several times over since the month I flew Huey gunships in Vietnam. I quit, and returned to flying "slicks," and continued gaining decorations for other tasks in my aviation unit. Those events are recorded in my book, Outlaws in Vietnam. My buddy Fred Stetson knows the Graffs and I would surely like to. This woman is an uncommon writer, and I look forward to her constructing more excellent novels as she did this one. Her prose is very descriptive and impacting; she knows what she is doing. My family has fought in every war the United States ever had, from the seige of Louisburg to Bunker Hill, on through the Civil War and both World Wars that followed in this past century, as well as Korea. I know the feeling of pausing at old graves, and stood at the "Angle" as Riley did and heard the moans of the dying Confederates as some others have also experienced. I have also been many places where Captain George Pickett served before his infamous "charge" that July 3, that was the highwater mark of the Confederacy. I had to lift my boots up from the grass there, where the blood flowed inches deep between the blades those many years ago. Uncanny to undergo.