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Review date:
02/26/2009
Epp, Karen Ross. (District 5,Newton) Kansas Authors Club review
With Love Stan;A Soldier's Letters From Vietnam To The World. Bloomington, IN:AuthorHouse, 2007, 329 pp., illustrated, paperbound, #19.95
Thirty-three years after nineteen-year-old SGT Stanley Dennis Ross fell in Vietnam on 20 October 1969, his sister Karen gathered his letters home. She edited Stan's sometimes shaky handwriting, and found surviving members of his 199th Light Infantry Brigade to confirm and reinforce Stan's bravery under enemy fire. This compelling memoir of her brother, his buddies, and his family back in the world, brings home the absolute horrors of war as if they happened only yesterday. Primary-source documents and candid photographs made it possible for Karen to write an inspired tribute to her brother and those who served with him. With unexpected twists like a bayonet thrust-jam-packed with trenchant wit, strong characters and simple, crisp, declaratory prose, this bittersweet biography ratchets up tension-inducing actions of true heroism...in on of America's most difficult and frustrating wars. (Review by Don Pady, January 2009)
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