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| Category: Fiction:Historical |
(requires Adobe Reader)
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| About the Book | |
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Each war is the same – is it worth the cost? With each new conflict most of us know someone who is lost or at risk. Then there is the personal psychological aftermath. All this is balanced by the social contract to defend our ideals, to serve bravely. Yet individually each young person is challenged at an awkward age to reconcile life and death, love and hate, personal gain and political loyalty, a quest which challenges even the wise. Zachary Comeaux delves beneath the clichés and editorialized portrayals of war by reviewing the actual life experiences of two warriors and a reflective pacifist in their struggles to serve, each in their own way. Jean-Pierre Robichaud, a Cajun farm boy, is introduced to a wider world and is wounded for the third time in the Hurtgen Forest, 1944. The encounter, and the peril of his men, haunts his dreams forever. Captain Lemaster, at 26, confronts Communism in an unanticipated form in the bloody jungles of Vietnam. Jean Junior, Jack, transitions from ROTC and engineering to seminary and pastoral care with a passion for contributing to a new and pacifist society. Each man’s agonizing quest to do the right thing is based on actual memoires to maintain a biographical or autobiographical tone. The “novel” slips us into the thoughts and reflections of three conscientious and honorable men. Their issues, though personal, mirror the issues of the nation even to our day. The theme sounds heavy, but the author uses real life incidents of these three strong men to frame the more serious questions with humor, romance, wit and adventure. This is Comeaux’s third historical novel and is, as usual, well researched. His persistence in contributing to a positive future is conveyed in several soft social sci-fi works related to health and wellness.
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| About the Author | |
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Zachary Comeaux, a teacher, international speaker, and practitioner of Osteopathic Medicine, grew up valuing Nature as a teacher, appreciating the need for balanced lifestyle as a means to health. Training in philosophy, theology and science before medical studies suit him in his approach to the body-mind-spirit paradigm in health car in additon to topics of social sensitivity. The issue of war and military service is an example worth reflection |