Walking Wounded: A Wartime Love Story

There have been endless books about World War II, but rarely on which deals not with the battlefield but with the home front and how the war affected ordinary people. Although WALKING WOUNDED is fiction, it has the authenticity of historical reality. The book is full of the progress of the war, but also delivers the joke's, the slang, the celebrities of the time. To read it is to travel back in time and be there. Jimmy McGinnity is not tall, dark and handsome. He's small, thin and has a gimpy leg that drags when he walks. It's his misfortune to fall in love with Beth Heinke, a knock-out girl, who is so bright and witty she has become a big hit on a radio show called, Breakfast with Betsy. She loses her job and is deeply in need of a friend. Jimmy becomes that friend but it's hard to be the best friend of a girl you're in love with when you know she's way out of your league. One of the most touching chapters is set in the favorite bar of Jimmy's alcoholic father who continually embarrasses him. His father has the whole bar singing a ballad about ABDUL, ABDUL EMIR! The son, so often ashamed of this father finally joins in the ballod he heard since childhood, and then tenderly gets his father off to bed. It's a masteful depiction of how love survives even continual abuse. Does the guy get the girl in the end? I can only say if you are a woman the ending will probably make you cry. WALKING WOUNDED is an unforgettable novel and an historiacally important one.

This is my brother's best book to date by far! It paints a picture of a different America, an America fighting a war that is popular and seen as just. Radio is king. And amidst that backdrop, the little people (and that's most of us) try to fit their lives.. with amazing success. The characters in "Wounded" are very believable and the author, who has lived there many years now, knows Madison. So few books these days really tell a story; this one does.

Set during WWII, Walking Wounded: A Wartime Love Story (by Marshall Cook) unfolds the workaday world of the Greatest Generation in Madison, WI. Rejected by Uncle Sam because of a bum leg, Jimmy McGinnity fills the shoes left by those who don combat boots to save the world from Hitler. He must battle his own demons if he is to succeed in his new post as photographer for the local newspaper, make peace with his alcoholic father, and win the love a woman who seems just out of reach. How does life and love in middle America stand a chance when compared with the heroism and valor of a battlefield so far away? An engaging story that remembers the Greatest Generation as regular people who rose to the intense challenges of their day, Walking Wounded is filled with both poignancy and humor. A new generation defined by the War on Terror may be surprised to find their own experiences reflected in the lives of Jimmy and friends.