It was truly a thrill to have my book Man with No Yesterdays
honored by being named a Finalist in the prestigious Wishing Shelf Book Awards
for 2019. Writing this book was an experience I’ll never forget—it took me into
the darkness of the Vietnam War, and the confusion and fear of a young soldier
losing the memory of most of his life experiences.
An Amazon Reader Review for Man with No Yesterdays begins
by calling the book “a fascinating read,” then elaborates on the premise: a man
who suffers from total retrograde amnesia, recalling only bits and pieces of
his early childhood, who comes to believe he will never remember more.
Could it happen? Theoretically, it could. Traumatic brain injury
can leave the victim with little or nothing in the way of personal memory, as
well as loss of the ability to speak, move, reason. Best case scenario, the patient
slowly recovers most if not all of his life and returns to a normal, or very
nearly normal, life.
Jake Cameron, my character introduced in Memories of
Jake whose story is told in considerably more detail in Man
with No Yesterdays, suffers a T.B.I. due to a helicopter crash in Vietnam.
Jake quickly regains his ability to function in the world, but nearly all of
his personal history has apparently been locked away for the remainder of his
life. He doesn’t remember anything about his years as a Green Beret in Vietnam,
even after meeting men he served with.
How would a man react to this awful dilemma? Jake first
tries to regain his memory, spending time at home with his family, looking at
photos, listening to their memories of him. As weeks and months pass and very
little is revealed to him other than a few early childhood moments, he begins
to face the possibility he may never remember the man—and the warrior—he once
was. So who is he now?
Throughout the book I strove to reflect on the
daunting difficulties our warriors faced in Vietnam, both
in country and after returning home. As a novelist, my aim in writing
the novel was to address a “what if” situation: what if a
young man who had fought valiantly in Vietnam lost all memory of himself and
even began to wonder why he had become a warrior? What then? How would he move
forward to create some kind of life for himself? And for Jake, this is
complicated further when he vividly recalls one childhood memory that rocks him
to his core.
Literary columnist and author Dave Astor referred to Man with
No Yesterdays as “A harrowing, humane, and inspiring book.” If you are
intrigued, the link to order the book on Amazon is included below, and it’s
available in paperback and Kindle.
