Reconciliation Road: A Family Odyssey of War and Honor - Hardcover

On having written a "loserama"
cooking up a "turkey" was certainly not my intent when i spent three months traveling 13,000 miles around america and four years writing my memoir about what the vietnam war did to one american family, namely rip it apart. many words have been used to describe "reconciliation road" since its publication, words that have usually been complimentary and often exceedingly so, including words from writers whose work i have long admired, including david halberstam, richard ford, bill moyers, tim o'brien, terry tempest williams and richard rodriguez. "reconciliation road" also went on to win a governor's writers award in washington state. maybe it isn't a great book, but it certainly is as honest and truthful as i could make it, a heartfelt attempt to understand one's own family and what the war did to us in those turbulent times. yes, i was an army infantry lieutenant who won an honorable discharge as a conscientious objector. it was a difficult stand in a time when many of us had to make difficult stands with few easy options. if that still qualifies me as a "selfish, cowardly baby-boomer" in some eyes, then so be it. to the author at least, "reconciliation road" comes up far short of achieving "loserama-hood." but take a look at the book and judge for yourself.

A famous grandfather, one of America's foremost military historians, a brigadier general. His grandson, a new Army Infantry lieutenant. Vietnam. A stand against war. A family ripped apart. This is Reconciliation Road, the story of one man's lifelong commitment to the fight, another man's refusal to fight, and the price they both paid. S. L. A. Marshall's place in history seemed secure. The author of thirty books about war (including Pork Chop Hill and Men Against Fire), a television commentator and syndicated columnist, "Slam" Marshall was said to have seen more combat in the twentieth century than any other American from his own days as a World War I doughboy in France to his several visits to the killing fields of Vietnam. Then, a decade after Marshall's death, a national controversy called his reputation into question. A major article in American Heritage magazine charged him with fraudulent research and falsifying his past, allegations also featured on the front page of the New York Times. Members of the Marshall family were outraged and urged John, S. L. A.'s grandson, to investigate the story. But John Douglas Marshall hesitated, remembering how his grandfather had disowned him after his honorable discharge from the Army as a conscientious objector. Their once-close relationship had become yet another casualty of the war. Reconciliation Road is the story of John Douglas Marshall's odyssey across America in search of the truth about his grandfather and the roots of their bitter split. It resonates with intriguing encounters of people (General William C. Westmoreland, CBS's Mike Wallace, Vietnam writer Larry Heinemann) and places (Fort Benning, the University of Virginia, theMarshall archives in El Paso, Texas, the grave of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., in Atlanta, the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.). Reconciliation Road is one of the few published accounts of a Vietnam conscientious objector, and much more. Part family memoir, part mystery, part road saga, part biography, this is an unforgettable American journey.