Customer Reviews

My Son Is a Marine

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Moving, inspiring, compelling, mystical, spiritual and entertaining! Personally, it was one of the best reading experiences of the year for me. Author, and mother of an Iraq veteran, Jo Anne Allen writes from her heart and it shows in her memoir "My Son Is A Marine". It is a joy and a real pleasure to read something uplifting dealing with the Iraq War experience. Even though her book is filled with enough "Kleenex Moments" to make a great soap opera, she never loses her faith in life.

Her moving words about her son and his friends are touching and healing. This book would be good spiritual medicine for those with children in a war zone; or whose own lives have been challenged by having to carry some of life's burdens. Jo Ann is not some simple minded "Pollyanna" but a faithful and very much human being, who is trying to cope and deal with her life under some extraordinary circumstances.

I found myself rooting for her and her family throughout the pages of this book. It is one of those stories that you are glued to as soon as you begin and must continue reading through to the end. I read it the first morning I got the book--I could not put it down until I was done with it.

This is not your normal "I got a son in the war story" by any measurement. It is something very special. I believe it will help bring people back to their own spiritual roots. It will change lives and make people different in a very positive way.

This is the MWSA's winner of "The Reader's Choice Award" for 2006! I give this book our top rating of FIVE STARS! A must read book!!!!

Jo Anne Allen's MY SON IS A MARINE captures in riveting detail the author's personal struggle through every mother's nightmare; a child deployed to combat. Despite the sheer gravity of the situation, Jo Anne manages to fill her story with humor and an unshakeable faith while describing how she kept both her spirits and that of her deployed Marine high throughout his combat tour in Iraq. Through Allen's extraordinary writing talent, her children come alive to the reader, as well as her "other children" (AJ's friends, whom she practically adopts), and even the family dog is described in such simple yet warm detail that you expect her to come bounding into your room at any moment!

Allen draws her audience in early with a graphic account of a childhood near-death experience for her son AJ, and then another from his teenage years. Both of these events convince the reader that AJ must survive, because he has some higher purpose from God. Eventually it becomes clear that the purpose is going to Iraq, where AJ not only does his duty, but impacts the lives of so many of his fellow Marines as well.

My favorite part was all the little anecdotes relayed through the story, usually concerning AJ's childhood. They add such depth to the narrative flow of the book. And the stories of the Three Trees and the Cup Full of Sins are ones that I will carry around with me for a long time. This book is easy to read, easy to develop, hard to put down, and impossible to forget. It is a must read for parents of young deployed servicemembers, and also for anyone who has ever asked the Almighty "Why?"

From a Marine Mom's point of view....a wonderful book. I cried and laughed at times through the whole book. There wasn't a page that I didn't like. I thank Jo Anne Allen for writting her story to share with us. She is a brilliant writer and a wonderful Mom. God Bless you Jo Anne and AJ. -Lori

Ooorah!

I just got through reading "My Son is a Marine" and found it to be a very touching and inspirational book. My son is also in the Marines and is presently doing border patrol in Iraq. Reading this book has helped me to find strength to lay down a lot of my worries about his safety and well being during his deployment. This book is more than a Marine Mother's story, it is a story of how faith can change lives. AJ is a phenominal young man and his love of God is such an inspiration. Thank you Jo Anne for telling your story and may God bless you and your family.

What an amazing Christian story of a young man who had seen God not once but twice in his childhood. And then becomes a Marine who has to kill people. A story seen through his Mother's eyes. Made me cry a few times as my youngest son went into the Marines after trying twice to become one and then was medically discharged almost a year after making it through boot camp with a badly injured knee. The first time he went in a badly injured ankle kept him from finishing bootcamp. They told him he could try again in a year and two years later he went back and became a Marine despite a knee injury in boot camp. This story reminded me of the struggles my son went through to become a Marine but this also includes the struggle of Aaron's Christian beliefs. I had to smile about Wendall calling Jo Anne Mom and her calling him her adopted son. I have 2 adopted Marines who grew up with my son and they went in the Marines the first time my son did and did go over to Iraq and Afghanistan and now my adopted Army National Guard son is over there. All of them call me "mom".