What an honor it is for an author to learn that his work is giving a reader he has never met some much needed comfort in a comfortless place. This is a young soldier named Nick Warren, on patrol in northern Afghanistan, reading my memoir of growing up outdoors, A Place on the Water. Nick wrote to say that the book has given him a taste of home, and he can’t wait to get back to western Michigan.
Jerry Dennis
Author
One of the first things I wrote home about on arriving in Cu Chi Vietnam in February 1970 during the dusty dry season was the need to get back to an “up north” place with clear blue skies, clear water, cool evenings, family meals and fishing. In wartime for many the alternating hyper-alertness and boredom the psyche calls for relief. If your book had been available then, I probably would have memorized it. I hope Nick gets back to western MIchigan without too much of the baggage of war.
Thanks, Bob. You’ll be glad to hear that Nick is heading home to Michigan in just a few days and plans to spend many quality hours in his fishing boat.