Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: The Diary of Molly MacKenzie Flaherty

"Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: The Diary of Molly MacKenzie Flaherty" is a great book, but knowing that it is the companion to "The Journal of Patrick Seamus Flaherty" also by White, just makes the story even more special. I think it's an interesting perspective: one of the books is from the soldiers point of view, while the other one is from the sister and family's point of view. White made Molly the every modern girl, and all female readers will be able to relate to her (I even saw a little of myself in Molly). I like how Ellen Emerson White made Molly the opposite of a hippy - very levelheaded and mature - during such a confusing time in history. The TV show name-dropping did get a little tiresome, and I wished the epilogue included what came of the wounded soldiers at the VA hospital, but the story is excellent. I recommend.

I love to read, but I am very picky. When I read books like this, I feel like it's going to be (a) too easy (b) too hard (c) too much action or (d) not enough feelings. Well, I needn't have had worried about this book! The diary-writer's name is Molly Flaherty. She was 15 during the late 1960s. Her older brother, Patrick, had just volunteered to fight in the Vietnam war. Molly misses him a lot. And she just doesn't know what to think. Be a hippie and protest? But is that betraying Patrick? Her decision is to volunteer at a Vietnam Veteran Hospital. She is surprised to see that most of the veterans are not much older than Patrick. In this way, she draws out her fear of Patrick dying, as she misses him so much. Great book.

This book is about a 15-year-old girl named Molly Mackenzie Flaherty. She is in the homefront turmoil of the [SE Asia] War. She talks about a lot of different things in this book, like the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., volunteering at the local VA hospital, Boston Common, hippies, school, driving, her dad being a firefighter, football, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Milhous Nixon, religion, Jason, and, most important, her brother, Patrick Seamus, being in Khe Sanh, [SE Asia]. There is a companion journal, The Journal of Patrick Seamus Flaherty. Where Have All the Flowers Gone? is a good book. ...I would recommend this book to everyone. It is very, very good.

15-year-old Boston native Mollie MacKenzie Flaherty is going through some tough times. The Vietnam War is raging overseas and not one day passes without Mollie thinking about her brother Patrick, who had voluteered to serve in the Marines. There is trouble at home too as the assasinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. rock the country. Through the four months chronicaling Mollie's life we meet a girl who is trying to keep herself busy and trying everything to help with the war. She finds a job at the VA hospital working to help injured soliders who had just come back from Vietnam. She finds sad but also inspiring stories there. However when the family is rocked with the news that Patrick was injured in the war everyone is nervous and waiting for news. Another pretty good Dear America book. It wasn't exactly the best, lacking something, I'm not sure what. Anyway I recommend everyone to read this book and its companion, the story of Patrick, "The Journal of Patrick Seamus Flaherty: U.S. Marine Corps"