In the Shadow of
Suribachi, Joyce Faulkner, combat, Iwo Jima, Marines, 5th Marines, Charles
Slezak, Lt Col David Grossman, PTSD, post traumatic stress, novel,non-fiction,
historical fiction
Ms. Faulkner is available for readings or to speak about how she came to
write this particular book. She enjoys working with book clubs,
libraries, bookstores, veterans groups, high school and college classes.
Discounts are available for purchases of five or more
copies of "In the Shadow of Suribachi". Contact
publisher@redenginepress.com
or call Pat at 417-230-5555 at Red Engine Press.
Or go to Amazon:
ATTENTION
REVIEWERS: Email Pat Avery
at Red Engine Press for a review copy. Include your name, your
publication and your address.
Praise
for “In the Shadow of Suribachi”
" I,
being a combat veteran, was always under the impression that in order to
write about combat you had to experience it first hand. After reading
“In the Shadow of Suribachi” I was pleasantly surprised to find that,
that is not always true. Author Joyce Faulkner has brilliantly captured
the essence, the terror of war and the life long brotherhoods forged in
the heat of battle that only those that have been through the fire and
lived to tell about it could truly comprehend. Required reading for
anyone, veteran or non-veteran, that wants to know what combat is really
like."--
Charles J. Slezak, Crew
Chief/Door Gunner, Co. A, 101ST Aviation Battalion, 101ST
Airborne Division, Vietnam
1965-1966
"Joyce
Faulkner has captured the spirit of one of the most trying times in
American War history. She has created realistic characters based on
people she has interviewed, and she has unified them into an interesting
story --making all the characters human beings. I strongly recommend
it, not only for historians, but for the relatives and those close to the
men involved in that period of American history."--
Russ
Spencer, Author of "The Naked Twilight"
"Seeing
the world from another's eyes is always a unique experience but looking
through Joyce's eyes is looking at the past with the same passion and pain
as those who experienced it."
--
Dominick
Miserandino, TheCelebrityCafe.com
"What
a splendid work! It is a handful of gem shards, fragments of
jewel-like lives, each a precious object in its own right, sharp and
fragile, cast down seemingly at random. Then, at the end, each piece
comes into focus in a stunning mosaic of humanity: still fragile, but ever
more beautiful and transcendent when viewed as a part of the whole."
--
Lt
Col Dave Grossman, Author of “On Combat” and “On Killing”
"In the Shadow of Suribachi is a collection of intense and realistic
stories that explain and define the impact the Battle of Iwo
Jima
had not only on history, but on countless Marines' psyches as well. This
book left me haunted and yearning to educate myself even more.
Faulkner's work will render her readers humbled and
contemplative."
--
Beverly
Walton-Porter, Editor, Scribe & Quill
"Faulkner
put me right in the middle of the battle of Iwo
. All that
was missing were the sounds. I was amazed at how she could have described
the details of the battle and not have been there herself. She wrote
of things that "we" who have fought, still have nightmares over."
Edward J. Wilson, TSgt, (Ret)
USAF
Security
Policeman
"What’s
the difference between Vietnam
, WWII, and
the Civil War? Ask the students: quite a lot. Ask the
soldiers? It’s all the same. In her gripping novel, In the Shadow
of Suribachi, Joyce Faulkner brilliantly captures that eternal truth, War
is hell, from inside the hearts of the soldiers who fight them.
In the end, we all perish, on the battlefield and in our souls."
--
Ken
Goldberg, Clinical Psychologist and Author of Peter Squared
"Author
Joyce Faulkner has introduced the main characters in this story leading up
to their experience in the Marine Corp during the battle for Iwo Jima.
By doing this, you feel you know how each will react in the carnage of
war. There are some surprises that make this one of those books
that's hard to put down. My
time in the service was during peace time, both in the Marine Corp.
(active duty) 56- 58 and the PA National Guard (Army) Reserve- 54-56.I have the deepest respect and
appreciation for those who have served in combat."
-- Tony Dissen, Pittsburgh,
PA
"Historical
fiction at its best combines authenticity of historical events with a
human touch. In the Shadow of Suribachi exemplifies just such
historical fiction. The reader is introduced by several vignettes to a
varied array of youthful personalities before WWII. Then in ten crisply
written chapters these young people come together in one horrific battle
at Iwo Jima
.
Graphic realism combined with artful dialogue lends an emotional intensity
and immediacy to a famous battle. Joyce Faulkner has written a real page
turner that drawsthe
reader inexorably into the suffering and pain of war and deepens one’s appreciation
for the immense human cost of all war."
--
Fran McGrath,
High School History Teacher for 34 years, Pittsburg,
Kansas
"In
the Shadow of Suribachi
should be required reading on Air Force One."
--
Hugh
Rush,Retired English Teacher,
MesaArizona
“As
the mother of an Iraqi Freedom veteran in the 101st Air Assault, from
reading Suribachi I gained a sense of what my son must have felt as he
pushed across the desert on his way to
Baghdad
. It was a different war and a different time, but Suribachi
brings the reality and pathos of conflict front and center in any
age.” --
Mindy
Phillips Lawrence, author of “One Blue Star: Poems about the
Military, Families, War and Peace.”
In a way, I began writing this book when
I was a child and my father suffered a nervous breakdown. Twelve
years after the Battle of Iwo Jima, the stress of those thirty-six days
haunted his days and nights. He couldn't eat or sleep and he
couldn't articulate exactly what it was that was bothering him. It
surfaced in drugged snippets told out of context. I had no idea what
he meant most of the time - I just knew it was something bad. He was
proud to be a part of the great effort of his generation and happy to have
survived when so many others didn't. Yet he saw and did things that
broke his heart and he grieved for friends lost forever. It wasn't
until long after he died when I began the research that supports this work
that the pieces of the puzzle came together. I don't begin to
understand what it was like. I'm a writer and these are
stories. What happened on that sulfuric-smelling island in February
and March of 1945 is indescribable. Maybe that's why so many of
those who lived it have chosen not to try. --Joyce
Faulkner, April, 2005
"The chosen few that live to tell about the gore of battle usually don't
mention it, yet they carry the effects each instant of every day. Vividly
portrayed "In the Shadow of Suribachi," Joyce Faulkner provides a ride
through history to meet simple men that become fate's chosen warriors. Ms.
Faulkner accurately creates the brutality and complications of intense
warfare through characters from the thirties and beyond the Vietnam War. She
craftily reveals the War Veteran's shared dilemma from the first instant of
battle - that dark permanence felt as the warrior gets blind-sided with loss
of innocence and becomes chained silently to guilt FOREVER!" ~Hodge Wood "OTR/L, Writer, and Life
Member of the Paralyzed Veterans of America, PVA"
"This is a book that will remain etched in the reader's own memory, for many
years to come." ~ Hugh Rosen, author of the novel, Silent Battlefields
"Ms.
Faulkner's book is a literary novel of the first class. It appears that
nothing is impossible to her pen, and no feeling, impression, or picture is
beyond the power of her words. Your heart will ache for these young men and
break when confronted with their deaths. Nonetheless, this is an amazing
book that will allow those who never have known a WWII veteran to understand
a little more about what this greatest generation was all about." ~Sylvia
Cochran, Roundtable Reviews
"Flaws aside, In the Shadow of Suribachi is an earnest and
compassionate book. Through her story, Ms Faulkner conveys a deep interest
in her subject and she writes with empathy and sincerity of a battle that
should not be forgotten, and of the men who fought it." ~ BlogCritics.org
"What makes the book so good is her ability to describe the actions,
reactions and thoughts of men in combat. The key to survival, to functioning
at all in combat is small unit cohesion. Ms. Faulkner seems to have grasped
this better than nearly any writer I know. Her understanding and analysis of
what is making these men think and act as they do in a time of utmost stress
is amazing. Her description of the effects of modern weapons on the human
body likewise makes you believe that she was there." ~
John Matlock "Gunny"
"
War became real and the human struggle unfolded right in front of my eyes,
mind and soul...The reality of what so many are dealing with today to
protect us at home and spread the freedom of spirit around the world is
priceless."~Denise Pepin
"Readers should know that, though they may well be mesmerized by this story
(stories), it is not easy reading. Endorsed by professionals from the Army's
101st Airborne Division to history teachers, it captures what Lt. Col. Dave
Grossman calls "the reality of human aggression and combat." This is a time
when we, as a nation, need to fully understand what we are sending our young
men and women to do. To understand it may behoove us to visit--or
revisit--Suribachi"
--
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Book Pleasures
"Faulkner's
work will leave her readers humbled and contemplative. You will also
be treated to a work by a woman who understands people, especially men, like
no other woman you have ever read." -- Tom Wood, Editor, Ag Pilot
International Journal
"The "Great
Generation" is slowly leaving us. Their stories, told with passion and long
overdue compassion, should draw us to them and remind us that life is to be
lived in all its aching glory. Rare voices say it with as soft a touch, yet
as penetrating a needle as this." -- Maggie Abbott, Gettysburg, PA
"Based on interviews with
family and survivors, these historically accurate stories paint a picture of
the horrors of war and the innocence of the men and women who suffer the
consequences first hand. Growing up in the Vietnam era, when the story
switched to Kent State, it hit me right between the eyes. Ms. Faulkner's
writing style brings the various storylines together for an altogether
fitting and satisfying conclusion." -- Darrell House, Author, Song
Writer, Performer.
"The individual stories of these
7 young men are compelling in their own right. But when Ms Faulkner weaves
their lives together through their training as Marines in Hawaii and into
the battle at Iwo Jima, I felt I was with them every step of the way. A must
read for anyone who has experienced war first hand; for all those who love
and support them. and want to understand what it's really like." -- a
reader in Kansas.
"...one of those rare
books that compelled me to read almost non-stop...[it] should be required
reading for upper grades in high school and college. If there are those
who doubt or are unaware of the horrors of war they would be well-served
by this gripping narrative. As a veteran of the Pacific Theatre of
Operations in W.W.II, I can vouch for the portrayal of painful conditions
in that theatre... a masterful accomplishment" -- A. J. Harris MD, FACS
"I finished the book and was done
with it long before it was done with me. I was so sad that the read was over. I
wanted more! More of their lives, more of their children's lives. Sequel? One
can only hope.
I was captured from the beginning, and even more so toward the end. During the
invasion I found I was holding my breath, and when the read was complete, I
realized every emotion I possessed had been pulled from me and all was spent.
When one of the characters died, I was forced to lay the book down and grieve
for them. I could smell the dirt from the fox holes, feel the bullets racing by
my head, and fear was my constant companion as I turned from one page to the
next. Fear, but laced with hope for their safe return to "HOME" and whatever
laid ahead." ~ Georgia Richardson, Author of A Funny Thing Happened on the
Way to the Throne.
In a way, I began writing this book when
I was a child and my father suffered a nervous breakdown. Twelve
years after the Battle of Iwo Jima, the stress of those thirty-six days
haunted his days and nights. He couldn't eat or sleep and he
couldn't articulate exactly what it was that was bothering him. It
surfaced in drugged snippets told out of context. I had no idea what
he meant most of the time - I just knew it was something bad. He was
proud to be a part of the great effort of his generation and happy to have
survived when so many others didn't. Yet he saw and did things that
broke his heart and he grieved for friends lost forever. It wasn't
until long after he died when I began the research that supports this work
that the pieces of the puzzle came together. I don't begin to
understand what it was like. I'm a writer and these are
stories. What happened on that sulfuric-smelling island in February
and March of 1945 is indescribable. Maybe that's why so many of
those who lived it have chosen not to try. 