Location: United States
Member Since: Sep. 25, 2011
joe green
Books
This member has not published any books.Smashwords book reviews by joe green
- Finding Fred
on Oct. 23, 2011
There are two phrases that occur throughout this story: "Things change in an instant" and "Regrets, there are always regrets" and these phrases both capture what is there and, in an odd, human all too human, strange all too strange way transcend themselves...for this is a story of discovery and loss, of illumination AND the obliteration of memory. I couldn't stop reading and I wondered why. Everything that I love is there in a way. My father was also in the war, was a depression man -- there's that yearning to somehow access what he (they) knew, whatever looms out of the past. There's the expertly limned story of growing up without a father and with a mother hurt forever by loss. But, finally, there is the strangeness of the discoveries described. I wanted it all. And loved it all. One day everything changes, what is lost partially returns. A long journey. I don't want to spoil the journey you will take for you. But here's the end: "Jim pours out 15-year-old Glenlivet. We raise our glasses to Fred B. Smith and to the crew who perished there and to us, and the moment of a lifetime. We toast Richard for his selfless service and willingness to share what he knows with us. He’s trying hard to hold it together; it’s a loaded moment. I hug Steve—each of us with cup of scotch pressed against the other’s back—and say, “60 years on. A long time coming,” the words come out choppy, it’s hard to breathe. We hold one another fiercely, brothers in arms at the end of a long road both together and apart."