3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This should become a classic, June 6, 2006
This review is from: FACING THE WALL: A MISSION (Paperback)
Mary S. King has written a book that should be required reading for every American citizen. She deserves a Vietnam Service Medal, as she has served, and continues to serve our country in an honorable way.
She has taken her marriage vows seriously, as she loves and supports her combat veteran husband, Jim, who is still suffering from his wartime experience. With this book,she invites us into their world. It is a world of broken dreams. She has had to accept that the early promise of her marriage to a decent, caring man, has deteriorated into a lifetime of fighting horrendous demons of the war.
With great bravery, she takes over the role of breadwinner and support system for her husband, who is too damaged mentally and emotionally to handle that role. She loves her husband and their two sons fiercely, going above and beyond the call of duty as she stands by Jim through his depressions, flashbacks, and eventual hospitalizations in the VA.
It is only after he is officially diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome that things improve somewhat. As Mary notes, "when you fight PTSD, or any illness, it is easier to struggle against it when you know what the demon is that you are fighting."
Their ensuing trip to The Wall in Washington, D.C. is an emotionally wrenching scene that is hard to forget. This book provides great insight into the true emotional, physical, mental and spiritual costs of war for veterans, their family and friends.
Mary is a true American heroine, standing for the values of faithfullness, courage and hope. Her story speaks for legions of women who have paid a steep price for loving a war veteran. I know of what I speak, for I was once a "Vietnam wife."
How sad that this book is so timely, as the Iraq war rages on. Fortunately, the wives,sweethearts, and families of our veterans in this latest war, will have this book to inform, inspire and encourage them.
It's a book Mary, myself and so many others wish we could have had many years ago, when there was nothing written for or about us.
Thank you Mary, for shining a light on us!
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Facing the Wall: A Mission, June 2, 2005
As I reread Mary's words, it was as if an old friend was telling me a new story. This book covers all the trials of a young family coping with the after effects of a trauma, in this case a war. It maps out an unknown path with twists, turns and blind alleys. It is an overview of a battle to "just make it through" the days. Facing the Wall is a recounting of love that is deep and "a mission" that continues.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Kirkus Review, February 28, 2011
Not my words:
[...]
Kirkus Star Editor Review
A Vietnam vet's wife fights a long battle with her husband's post-traumatic stress disorder in this poignant memoir.
When her husband Jim, a 27-year-old Marine, returned intact from Vietnam in 1969, the author hoped that the couple could resume their lives as before. But although Jim bore no physical scars from his year in combat, his psychic wounds ran deep. Indeed, he hardly seemed to have left the war. He was plagued by nightmares and flashbacks in which he would call for medevac choppers or imagine himself surrounded by enemies. He veered between hypervigilance and catatonic staring, insisted on sitting with his back to a wall so he could survey his perimeter, and was spooked by both loud noises and silence; only the soothing sound of crickets could convince him there was nothing lying in wait. Over the decades, Jim's illness took a heavy toll; he lost jobs and eventually became unemployable, withdrew emotionally from his wife and sons and endured periodic hospitalizations. (In the author's telling, the Veterans Administration long ignored the Vietnam-era PTSD epidemic and was more a hindrance than a help in coping with Jim's problems.) In her clear-eyed memoir, King draws a subtle, layered portrait of her lost soul of a husband. Sometimes he seems unreachable, sunk in memories of Vietnam and of his buddies who didn't make it back (or in guilt over his own survival) and unable to carry out the simplest project; but he also devotedly serves as a volunteer fireman and pulls himself together to help his wife through crises and grief. It is as much the author's story as Jim's, as she struggles to hold the family together and fathom the stranger her husband has become, and to reclaim her own personality from the ravages of "secondary" PTSD. With America's latest conflicts still generating victims, this is a very timely book: an anguished, unsparing, but ultimately hopeful view of the heartbreak of PTSD.
An absorbing firsthand saga of war's invisible casualties.
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