Amazon US $5.99 $18.95
Amazon CA $23.56
Military
American Civil & Vietnam Wars
19th / 20th century
Sons of My
Fathers by Michael A. Simpson is based on the author’s own
family history and reads almost like a biography. However, I assume that
attributes of its characters are as the author imagines them and, hence, are
fictional in detail; but what great writing, bringing this saga alive for the
reader.
The very clever cover of a denuded tree strangled by sabotaged lengths of railroad
tracks is haunting. The book begins
during 1864, the American Civil War. Baylis Simpson and his family eke out a
meager living as sharecroppers in Georgia which, of course, backed the
Confederacy. As in all wars, the atrocities play out not only on the
battlefield but split this fertile land and its families asunder with obscene
travesties against humankind. Baylis Simpson sees his family destroyed. As he
and his kin vow vengeance against the murderous rabble taking property and
lives that had escaped the Union Army, the Simpsons are caught between the
warring lines.
One hundred years later, Baylis’s descendent, young Ron Simpson becomes
a U.S. Army helicopter pilot. He volunteers to serve his country as a medevac
pilot in Vietnam. His beliefs and his life are turned upside down when,
instead, he is assigned to fly a Huey gunship. He loves his country deeply, but
will not serve it by flying this killing machine. There is only one option for
him; by taking it, he threatens to destroy not just himself, but his family.
The book’s chapters switch seamlessly from the physical plight and
mental turmoil of one generation to the other, and the reader becomes deeply
engrossed in the fate of both, while the book’s prose deftly adapts to the tone
and language of the times. And, without hammering it home, it left me with a
troubling message: We are not heeding history. Hence, we have learned nothing!
For me, Sons of My Fathers was indeed a Discovered
Diamond to earn a sparkling and well-deserved place on this Review Site.
© Inge H.Borg
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