{"id":152,"date":"2012-04-02T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=152"},"modified":"2020-07-14T10:42:31","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T15:42:31","slug":"b-is-for-battle-fatigue-by-mark-kurlansky-fiction-vietnam-war-battles-come-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/?p=152","title":{"rendered":"B is for Battle Fatigue, by Mark Kurlansky (fiction) – Vietnam War battles come home"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n

Little-boy games turn into young men’s worries.
\nHow can war injure someone without leaving a scratch or bruise?
\nCan history be right and current events still be terribly wrong?<\/p>\n

Joel’s childhood memories – playing soldiers with his pals, cheering for the Brooklyn Dodgers<\/a> to finally win before they move to LA, those blue numbers tattooed<\/a> on the bakery lady’s wrist – form the backdrop to his anguished dilemma as his draft number comes up in the early days of the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

How can he reconcile becoming a Conscientious Objector<\/a> with the sacrifices that his father and uncle made in World War II? How can he live with himself if he goes to fight a war that he deeply believes is wrong<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Noted nonfiction author and researcher Mark Kurlansky takes readers on a young man’s emotional journey in a work of fiction that rings truer than many biographies.
\nLook for Battle Fatigue<\/i> at your local library<\/a> or independent bookseller<\/a> to discover where Joel lands.
\n**kmm<\/p>\n

Book info<\/b>: Battle Fatigue \/ Mark Kurlansky. Walker Books for Young Readers, 2011. [author’s website<\/a>] [author interview video<\/a>] Review copy and cover image courtesy of the publisher.<\/p>\n

My Recommendation<\/b>: Joel knows he\u2019ll grow up and go to war to keep America free, like his dad and uncle did. But when a teen neighbor returns from Vietnam physically unharmed and mentally shattered, he begins to question whether every war is right.<\/p>\n

Born on the 7th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, grandson of European refugees, Joel Bloom plays kids\u2019 games with his pals and the souvenirs that their dads brought back from WWII. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, he and his junior high classmates practice diving under their desks for A-bomb drills (sometimes a chance to hold hands with sweet Kathy). He tries to teach a German exchange student how to act more American, but local memories of relatives lost in the Holocaust prove stronger than Karl\u2019s willingness to be shunned. How odd that Karl\u2019s only friend in Haley is the first Jew he\u2019s ever met.<\/p>\n

In November 1963, Joel turns to his diary as he tries to make sense of JFK\u2019s assassination. High school means varsity baseball, a newfound love of chemistry, and afterschool fights that someone else starts; even his little brother gets challenged to fights because Joel never loses. Everything changes when President Johnson announces on TV that the USA is now fighting in Southeast Asia\u2026 and Joel realizes that he and his pals will fight and die in this war.<\/p>\n

Dickie from next door enlists in the Marines and leaves for the war proud and tall, returning broken and haunted. College will keep Joel from being sent to Vietnam for four years\u2026 but will it be long enough? He doesn\u2019t want to go \u2013 not because he\u2019s afraid, but because it\u2019s not right. Will he become a Conscientious Objector or enlist anyway or head to Canada? Big questions from a troubled time in our nation\u2019s history and one young man\u2019s attempt to answer them for himself. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Little-boy games turn into young men’s worries. How can war injure someone without leaving a scratch or bruise? Can history be right and current events still be terribly wrong? Joel’s childhood memories – playing soldiers with his pals, cheering for the Brooklyn Dodgers to finally win before they move to LA, those blue numbers tattooed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,50],"tags":[10,22,7,75,20,40,49,21,8,149,59],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-historical","tag-a2z","tag-behavior","tag-beliefs","tag-brothers","tag-conflict","tag-fathers","tag-memories","tag-self-image","tag-us-author","tag-vietnam","tag-war"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11597,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/11597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/booksyalove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}