Muddy Jungle Rivers, a river assault boat Cox'n's memory journey of his war in Vietnam and return home, gives the reader a close-up look at life in the Mobile Riverine Force during 1968, the bloodiest year of the Vietnam War.Images come alive as the story unfolds about a seven-man crew captained by a volatile, pro-war enlisted man. Told from a twenty-year-old sailor's point of view, this memoir takes the reader into frustration, rage, terror, death, betrayal, and search for redemption.This book won the Minnesota Veteran's Voices Award in 2017.
Great for research This biographical book features resource material for anyone seeking to understand the plight of women in the 1940s. The author highlights the life of his stepfather, Herman, a shy WWII veteran who responds to the personal ad of a New York pianist with four children. In 1949, Barbara moves to his rural Minnesota farm with her young children, including the author.Part II of this short book includes a rare 52-page Lonely Hearts Catalogue from 1945. This book is a great resource for those researching family history and would make an intriguing text for Women's Studies programs.The Chickenhouse Chronicles is a series of cross-genre, standalone books that do not need to be read in any order.
Caught between a mentally ill mother and a stepfather with undiagnosed PTSD, Author Wendell Affield's childhood was marked by family dysfunction. In this memoir, which includes nearly 100 illustrations, he recounts growing up on an isolated farm in northern Minnesota in the 1950s.Musty letters, documents, and sixty-year-old photo negatives conjured memories as Affield pored over them.In a grainy negative beneath the magnifying glass, Affield saw his mother as the beautiful, mentally ill young woman transplanted in 1949 from her cosmopolitan New York roots. She stands beside the lilac that the author will land next to a few years later after jumping from a second story window to escape her fury.Memories of a murdered puppy and his stepfather's rage rose to the surface as Affield studied a blurred image of the corncrib the dogs were tied beneath at the farm.In another picture he discovered himself wedged between his brothers and sister in a leaky rowboat and flashed back to the summer his mother hid from her abusive husband in a cabin perched above Lake Chelan in the Cascade Mountains. Faded photos and hand-written birth dates on the backs reveal a woman who feared forgetting her children after she was committed to a mental institution, her children in foster homes.Follow along on this journey as the author researches his own childhood and uncovers brand new details about himself and his family.
BARBARA is a riches-to-rags tale about an extraordinarily talented, troubled young woman. After Barbara's death in 20 I 0, the author, Wendell Affield, discovered thousands of documents locked in a rodent-infested chickenhouse. Having spent his childhood living with his mother's mental illness, Affield studies the contents in an effort to understand his mother's life and search for clues to his biological father. BARBARA, PARTS I and II, explore Barbara's two-decade downward spiral as she struggles with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Taught by the famous pianist, Emile Bosquet at Institut Droissard, Brussels, Belgium, Barbara's natural talent blossoms. Mouse-gnawed 1939 documents reveal Barbara's impulsive engagement (and possible marriage) in Poland, and her narrow escape from the Nazi invasion. Upon her return to New York, after dropping out of juilliard School, Barbara begins a decade of running from her problems, leaving a wake of failed marriages and rendezvous resulting in four children. Feeling abandoned by her family and searching for a new start, she posts an advertisement in Cupid's Columns that is answered by a bachelor farmer in northern Minnesota. BARBARA, Part III, chronicles the author's search for his biological father and the labyrinth leading to a breakthrough. Acceptance by his new-found family is an incredible testament to the power of love.
