In The War by Jennifer Jean

In The War
Jennifer Jean
Big Table Publishing Co.
(c) 2010

Big Table Publishing Co. seems to be located somewhere in Massachusetts, although they are reluctant to state exactly where. I find that curious for a publishing company. Really? You don't want people to know where you are located? How does that work for you? I mean, you have to send an email to them in order to submit poems for consideration through the mail. What? They email you back their mailing address? Weird, weird, and more weird.

It may well be that this book is about the Vietnam War through the eyes and memory of a little girl whose lost her father (twice?) to that horror. But it's as much about something else. Different/other things. It's an Odyssey across America. One girl's maturity coming with haunting shadows of sorrow. Perhaps; yet it can only give what a girl much too young to understand the HELL of what that jungle war did to her father, and every father/son/husband/spouse went through simply to survive it; little more than glimpses through a prism.

I am a veteran of the era although I served my four years (1975-79) state-side. Unless one lived through it, one has no real point of reference to it. The "it" lingers just off the page throughout this book. It's a valid effort to be sure, and as an effort it has, I do hope, helped the author to come to terms with things beyond her comprehension as a child.