Promises to the Fallen: A Vietnam War Novel

I am excited to reveal the cover for Promises to the Fallen: A Vietnam War Novel. I'm proud of how it turned out. I started writing this novel in the fall of 2018.

I still have some work to do, and will announce, soon, the date Promises to the Fallen will be available. You will have your choice of Kindle (eBook), Paperback, Hardback, or Audiobook.

After writing memoirs, When I Turned Nineteen, Soldiering After the Vietnam War and Finding My Platoon Brothers, I wanted to write about the Vietnam War with more freedom than being restricted by my memory from fifty years ago or old documents I found. So, I returned to Vietnam in June 2018 and started my journey.

I revisited the locations where my platoon brothers lived, worked, played, and died. Walking in the platoon’s footsteps, up hills, through hedgerows, and across rice paddy dikes that I trekked upon five decades ago, I refreshed my memory of the physical sensations and landscape I traversed at nineteen during the Vietnam War.

As I authored this story, I drew on firsthand experiences using my assigned army unit, Alpha Company of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment 11th Light Infantry Brigade Americal Infantry Division, from my year in Vietnam along with some firebases and locations we patrolled.

I didn't write in the real context regarding the places or of the incidents from when I served. I did write them from my experiences and used other veterans’ time in the war to add to what an infantry soldier went through and what he thought as he survived his three hundred and sixty-five days.
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Tim O’Brien, the author, explained the difference between “story-truth” (fiction) and “happening-truth” (the true fact) and at times story-truth is truer than happening-truth. Story-truth is the emotion, the feeling created by a fictional story and sometimes truer.
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With that in mind, I offer this book not as a true story of the Vietnam War but as a lens through which I hope you will be able to observe with compassion and understanding from one infantry platoon's day-to-day struggle with survival, conflict, and death.