I’m a verified author on Medium! Nice, nice and lovely, thank you. Perhaps then I could tell the story of what my book is about — it’s the question anyone asks when you tell them you’ve written something. And so, here is the story I tell. It means a great deal to me, my grandmother in all her famous quirks was much beloved by me, my siblings and my cousins. So, if you’ve got any remarks to make, be kind. Or else I’ll send you the worm song she used to sing to me when I was young and cranky.
My novel, Sometimes A Soldier Comes Home, is loosely based on my grandparents’ lives. My grandmother was a young mother of two when her husband (and my mother’s father), Roger, was drafted into World War II. It was late in the war, 1944, and they called the family men last. My mother was 8 months old when Pearl Harbor was attacked, so Roger was already a father before the US entered the war. He also, from many reports, was a pacifist and so was loath to join the war voluntarily.
He was called and he went first to training camp in Arkansas and then shipped overseas in January 1945. He saw action in the Battle of The Bulge and other decisive battles. He survived them all — not without some stories he eluded to in his letters. And he longed to come home to his beloved high school sweetheart and young family in hopes that he might find his…
