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Recommended Reading: Special Memorial Day Edition
May 28, 2007

I don't have much time to write this morning, because thanks to the sacrifices of American servicemembers over the years, my family and I are free to head to the pool on Memorial Day and enjoy a few hours of complete leisure. But before we experience that privilege, I want to take a few moments and remember all of our veterans and to heartily recommend a remarkable, singular book (and those words really don't apply to many books or many things at all for the matter these days): Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Soldiers and Their Families by Andrew Carroll (editor) and Dana Gioia (preface).

                                                           

Why is this book singular? It's the first (and who knows, perhaps only) collaboration between the Department of Defense and the National Endowment for the Arts, facilitated by the passionate and dedicated Andrew Carroll, whose ongoing War Letters Project both honors our veterans and preserves history by collecting and archiving letters from fighting men and women throughout our nation's history.

Why is this book remarkable? Operation Homecoming isn't simply a collection of letters. It's a collection of letters, stories, poems, and more from those men and women fighting right now -- who were given the chance to take writing workshops from some of the best American writers (Richard Bausch, Victor Davis Hanson, Jeff Shaara, Bobbie Ann Mason, Judith Ortiz Cofer) so that they could shape narratives to give their individual stories meaning. The launch of this book last year was held at the Library of Congress, and many of the contributors attended and read portions of their work.

You might have been able to say something cliched like "there was not a dry eye in the house" -- except that would underestimate both the power of what happens when art meets experience and the quiet, humble strength of the assembled.

Look at that. I've been writing for a while, and I've delayed our departure for the pool. And I don't mind one bit. I hope you'll take a peek inside Operation Homecoming -- if not today, Memorial Day, then perhaps sometime this summer. Here's an excerpt, "Purple-Hearted" by U.S. Army Reserve Staff Sergeant Jack Lewis, to get you started.

Posted by Bethanne Patrick on May 28, 2007 | Comments (0)