Memories of Jake – Reader Response

Two brothers, Andrew and Jake Cameron, both serve in the Vietnam War … Andrew as a door gunner for the Marines, Jake as a Green Beret. Both return home … but only one returns as himself. Jake is injured in a helicopter crash and suffers total retrograde amnesia. Older brother Andrew can’t accept Jake’s memory loss. From childhood, he has been his brother’s supporter and protector.

Memories of Jake has received some strong reviews since its release in late March. Available on Amazon, paperback and Kindle.

A few review excerpts:

"The story overall is very easy to read. It takes you on a journey from tragedy to growth, back to hardship and beyond. The brothers pull you in - their bond is strong, and the challenges they face together and apart ensure it stays a gripping tale." Self Publisher's Showcase, April 21, 2017

“Susan Moore Jordan’s gentle prose serves as the perfect backdrop to the horror of the Vietnam War. She also shows how not everything damaging in life needs to be permanent. People are resilient and sometimes overcoming the past is a matter of will. The other aspect of this story I really enjoyed was Cameron Family’s reliance on music and art as a means to find themselves. Andrew’s painting saved him. It was his therapy and his joy. Beyond that, what kept me reading was the love shared between these two brothers. I had to know how everything turned out for them and clung to every page until the last, waiting for that moment when I could breathe out and put the book down with a feeling of contentment and relief.”

“Jake is injured in an attack that leaves him with post-traumatic amnesia, and has to rebuild his life again as he struggles to figure out who he is. Some of the scenes are powerful and heart-wrenching, like when Andrew deals with his boyhood memories and his experiences in Vietnam. Jordan's descriptions and dialog make you a part of the story. It's hard to put down.”

“MEMORIES OF JAKE is not just a war story, not just a story of pain and rebirth, but a story of love, family, friendship and the unstoppable ability of the human capacity to conquer that which sets out to destroy them. It is a story of hope.”

“The characters are all believable, each with his or her own voice. Art and music and how they help keep folks alive by keeping life worth living seep throughout the book, as with all of the author's work. (This time the visual arts play a large role as well as music.) Once Jake comes home from Vietnam, to a home and family he only remembers in shadows and fog, this book is tough to put down. Enjoy.”

https://www.amazon.com/MEMORIES-JAKE-Susan-Moore-Jordan-ebook/dp/B06XXHJ63N

Or visit my website: www.susanmoorejordan.com

Jake's Journey

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 truly 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. And he does have moments of recall from childhood, a few very vivid; but most are snapshots, faded and foggy. As weeks and months pass and very little more is revealed to him, he begins to face the possibility he may never remember the man he was … the warrior he 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.

I appreciate that this reviewer called the book “a fascinating read.” My hope is that a reader will come away with that sense. It was not an easy book to write, and I challenged myself even further by allowing Jake to speak for himself … writing in the first person. My pre-publication “beta” readers were enthusiastic about the novel. Time will tell whether all readers will share that enthusiasm!

If you are intrigued, the link to order the book on Amazon is included below, and it’s available in paperback and as a Kindle. If you read and enjoy … I would love to hear from you (my email address is on my website), and reviews are music to us indie authors’ ears!

Portrait by Ashleigh Evans

Cover Design by Tristan Flanagan

website: www.susanmoorejordan.com

Link to Amazon book page: https://www.amazon.com/Man-Yesterdays-Susan-Moore-Jordan/dp/1977701809/

So, I Wrote this Book ...

So I wrote this book, Man with No Yesterdays. It’s about a young Green Beret who is injured in Vietnam. Jake Cameron suffers a head injury and is left with severe retrograde amnesia, and when he can’t remember who he is … other than a few glimpses of his early childhood … he sets out on a journey to see if there’s some way he can find himself. He’s been advised by a psychologist that sometimes being in places and with people from his past might “trigger” memories, and Jake gets more than he bargained for.

Not a bad plot, right? I thought so. And since Jake made his first appearance in a preceding novel, I felt he was almost insisting I let him tell his own story. So I wrote this book in the first person. Or rather, I’m fairly convinced it was Jake who did the writing, since I am a great-grandmother weeks away from observing her (gulp) eightieth birthday (please notice I said observing, not celebrating. When you get this close to eighty you’ll completely understand).

It was definitely a challenge. I had seven pre-publication readers who all seemed to find it worth reading and thought I had captured Jake’s voice. A few were very enthusiastic, saying they thought it was the best novel I’d written yet (this is novel number six, actually, since May 2013). Because the Vietnam War figures heavily in Jake’s experiences I decided to release the book on Veteran’s Day (we indie authors can make those choices).

I was really, really, really apprehensive about releasing this book. For all the reasons listed above. But I put it out there, and it’s live on Amazon, and I’ve even sold a few copies on line.

Here’s what’s keeping me awake at night. It’s been over a week, and I haven’t received even ONE review. Those of us who publish our own work really need reviews (I know I’m overusing the word “really,” but I’m doing it quite deliberately). They validate us and make us feel we aren’t totally lost in the vast Amazon book jungle (which grows by ACRES daily!) … a reader liked what we did enough to leave a comment on the book page.

Releasing a book is similar to sending your youngest, favorite, most beloved child off to kindergarten. You want to be right there with him at least through the first day, but you aren’t allowed inside. And I pushed Jake out the door with a great deal of trepidation (for those reasons listed above). Jake’s journey is full of diverse people and experiences. I debated subtitling it “an odyssey” but settled on “a journey.” Right at this moment I wish I’d decided to keep Jake home until at least next spring. Or maybe even for a year. I can understand why Anthony Doerr took ten years to complete his great book, All the Light We Cannot See. At the age of ten, his baby would do great in kindergarten.

I keep telling myself it’s the holidays, people are busy, even if they bought the book they probably aren’t reading it/haven’t read it. On the flip side, I wonder if they’ve read it and they hate it. I’ve had nice readers who have written some wonderful reviews for my novels. But Jake’s story is very different (or maybe I should say really, really different).

I write because I need to write, I love to write; I couldn’t stop writing because it’s become a necessity. But I hate this part. I’ll probably still keep writing, regardless. But right now I’m not so sure. One encouraging review would definitely be nice! Here's the link to the book if you're curious. (Good reviews only, though ... )

Portrait painted by Ashleigh Evans

Cover design by Tristan Flanagan

https://www.amazon.com/Man-Yesterdays-Susan-Moore-Jordan/dp/1977701809/

Or visit my website for links to order all my books: www.susanmoorejordan.com