From Publishers Weekly
In this follow-up to Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps (2002), which Schaeffer coauthored with his son, Corporal John Schaeffer, Frank and his wife confront the reality of their son’s deployment to Iraq in February 2003. Although the third sentence of this "Diary of Deployment" is "I’m elated for my boy because he sounds happy," the fourth is "I’m elated in the same way one is ‘elated’ by looking over a cliff." Over the ensuing months, Frank and Genie work to calm their nerves, get and share information from and with other parents, and help parents whose children are killed in battle cope with their losses—some of whose letters are included here, as are letters from John, who returns to his U.S. base safely in December. Schaeffer is unflinching in recounting day-to-day dreams, fears and coping mechanisms, and in registering his own, and others’, reactions to the politics of the war. Although most parents of soldiers don’t write Op-Eds for the Washington Post or appear on Oprah, Schaeffer is careful to try to give voice to "ordinary" parents and soldiers from all branches of the service, and that care is what makes this volume a valuable resource for other parents of military personal.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Book Description
In 1998, novelist Frank Schaeffer's eighteen-year-old son, John, joined the marines straight out of prep school. Their ensuing journey, recounted in Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps, struck a fervent chord among the many Americans with a family member in the military, inspired personal communications from three American presidents, and propelled the book and the authors through many printings and onto Oprah, 20/20 and the New York Times extended bestseller's list. In Faith of Our Sons, Frank Schaeffer picks up his family's ongoing story as Corporal John Schaeffer is deployed to the Middle East on the day Gulf War II begins. Schaeffer's powerfully moving and timely account of the universal experience of losing a child-either temporarily or permanently-to war and his attendant emotions (from pride to panic to rage and back again) is punctuated throughout by the voices of the many others in Frank's situation, thousands of other parents and children, who continue to pour their hearts out to the Schaeffers in countless letters since the publication of Keeping Faith: from those waiting anxiously for loved ones to come home to those who know they never will.
Faith of Our Sons: A Father's Wartime Diary FROM THE PUBLISHER
"In 1998, Frank and Genie Schaeffer's eighteen-year-old son, John, enlisted in the United States Marine Corps...and then told his parents. John and Frank Schaeffers' ensuing experiences of learning how to be a U.S. Marine (and a Marine's parent), and of reevaluating their understandings of the words service and duty, were recounted in Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps. Their very personal story struck such a fervent chord amongst the many Americans with a family member in the military, that it inspired personal communications from three American Presidents and propelled the authors onto Oprah, 20/20, and Nightline and their book onto the New York Times extended bestseller list." "Then on February 18, 2003 - the day Gulf War II began - John Schaeffer was deployed to the Middle East." Faith of Our Sons is Frank Schaeffer's account of what it's like to send your child to war, and the powerful emotions attendant on that experience (from panic to pride to rage and back again). But as we read the homefront story of Frank and Genie Schaeffer, punctuated by the occasional call or e-mailed poem from their son, we also hear the voices of many others in the same situation.
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