My Name Is America: The Journal Of Patrick Seamus Flaherty, United States Marine Corps - Hardcover

Grade 6-9-Patrick turned down college scholarships to enlist in the Marines. In December 1967, just out of basic training, he finds himself in Vietnam, "on a combat base, out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains, and jungle-and- a whole lot of enemy soldiers." His journal is an intense and vivid record of the loneliness, confusion, comradeship, and suffering during the four months spent under constant assault by the North Vietnamese at Khe Sanh. Naive and provincial, the teen is transformed and matured by combat. He develops a close friendship with Bebop, a Detroit jazz musician, and begins to question whether he and his comrades are actually accomplishing anything. "Too much shelling, too many mortar attacks, too many casualties. Not enough food, water, and mail." Patrick writes that he doesn't want to make any more friends, "because you keep losing them all the time." In April, 1968, the men of Hill 881S are sent to a "safe" base at Quang Tri. There, in an ironic twist of fate, Patrick is badly injured, and Bebop is killed in a rocket attack. Based on extensive research, Journal is supplemented with photographs, a map, a historical note, and an epilogue. Readers will respond to this absorbing book's vivid descriptions, deft characterizations, and fast-paced action. A sensitive treatment of a painful episode in America's history.
Patricia B. McGee, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 7-10. The author of Road Home (1995) calls again on her knowledge about the Vietnam War in this Dear America volume. The time is 1968, and Patrick has enlisted. As a going-away present from his father, he receives a diary, which he puts to use, at first because he's bored and lonely, then because he needs to articulate what he sees when he's caught up in the siege at Khe Sanh. The events are horrific, but White's characters are little more than stereotypes--the ladies' man, the "professor," the black soldier who loves jazz. Patrick himself is mostly just a reporter. What White gets right are the terms and the details--the mud, the sweat, the terror when someone is blown apart before your eyes, and the question: Should we really be here? Photos and an epilogue are included (which may confuse despite a note that the book is fiction), as is an afterword discussing the general historical context. Pair this with Walter Dean Myers' Fallen Angels (1988), which has more depth. Stephanie Zvirin
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