Our Brother's Keeper: My Family's Journey through Vietnam to Hell and Back [Hardcover]

Jedwin Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 2005

Advance Praise for Our Brother's Keeper

"Beautifully written and extraordinarily poignant, Our Brother's Keeper is a Vietnam book like none other. The ghosts of Vietnam are finally starting to circle home, and this remarkable writer has given them voice with passion and resonance. I love Jedwin Smith's Fatal Treasure; Our Brother's Keeper is even closer to the heart."
-- Jeff Long, New York Times bestselling author of The Descent and The Reckoning

"Our experience in Vietnam has been searingly recorded in both fiction and nonfiction, but no book about those years is quite like this one. Jedwin Smith's Our Brother's Keeper tells the story of one family that has lived with death by remembrance, and of a man who found redemption when he wanted revenge. It will break your heart, but change it, too."
-- Michael Skube, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in criticism

"I read Our Brother's Keeper in the span of an evening and found it deeply affecting and totally enthralling. This book is a haunting, gut-wrenching, and ultimately redemptive journey through time and the human heart. Magnificent."
--Jack Kerley, author of The Hundredth Man

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Few Vietnam books treat the effects of a U.S. soldier's death on his family. This muscularly written, starkly honest memoir fills a significant gap. Smith (Fatal Treasure), an Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor, was 22 years old, the oldest of six children, when his beloved younger brother Jeff was killed by a Vietcong rocket during a firefight near the village of Mai Xa Thi on March 7, 1968. Jeff's death tore the fragile family apart: their mother retreated into severe alcoholism and an all-encompassing fixation on Jeff (who had been her favorite); their emotionally distant father - a WWII Marine beset by postwar demons - left the family for another woman. Smith's other brothers and sisters suffered severe and lasting psychological problems, and Smith himself - while outwardly coping well by marrying, having children and working his way up the journalism ladder - became an emotional cripple bent on self-destruction: "Not only did I thoroughly embrace alcohol, but I also became kind of psychotic." Smith tells his story with bluntness and conviction, including what becomes a cathartic happy ending when he and two of his brother's fellow Marines make a journey to Vietnam in 2001 to visit the spot where Jeff died. (Mar.)
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Review

Jedwin Smith spent 30 years trying to repress all memories of his brother, Jeff, who was killed in Vietnam. But in Our Brother’s Keeper he tells what happens when the Internet brings him into contact with several of his brother’s old Marine buddies, including the guy who held Jeff in his arms as he died. First via e-mails, and then in person, Smith gets to know these men—all scarred by the past they shared. Together the author and his new friends make a pilgrimage to Vietnam, to visit the spot where Jeff died. In a remarkable twist, their Vietnamese guide turns out to be the former commander of the Viet Cong platoon responsible for the attack that killed Jeff. A powerful story of brotherhood, bravery and healing. (Reader's Digest, March 2005)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (March 16, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471467596
• ISBN-13: 978-0471467595
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,166,336 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Our Brother'sKeeper: My Family's Journey through Vietnam to, June 15, 2005

By 

Nicole Scourtis (Atlanta) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Our Brother's Keeper: My Family's Journey through Vietnam to Hell and Back (Hardcover)

About six weeks ago I was told I HAD to read this book for a book club that I am in. I am a romance/mystery junkie and put off reading what I felt would be a depressing WAR book...How wrong was I? This book, which reads like a great story instead of nonfiction, was riveting and inspiring with as much to say about family and interpersonal relations as it does about the Vietnam war. I laughed at Mr. Smith's memories of a very human warrior as well as cried at the manifestations of sorrow and guilt. I am a 31 year old woman who is as far removed from this war as one can get and yet the book brought home the personal and very unpolitical side of this very confusing part of our history. I was extremely thankful that Mr. Smith could share his experiences with me.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and unique look into the effects of the Vietnam War, August 27, 2005

By 

S. Taylor - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Our Brother's Keeper: My Family's Journey through Vietnam to Hell and Back (Hardcover)

I am a military history buff. I especially love to read books written by people who were there, or in this case a person who was greatly effected by the events described. I picked this book up on a whim from a book store and the writing style dragged me into the story. It is truly unique in that it is written by the brother of a Marine that died in Vietnam and that it really does not focus too much on the war. It does cover the basics of that era, but more focuses on the effects the war had back home, as well as the lasting effects on his family.

I am glad that Mr. Smith finally found a start to his healing and was able to write this book to share with the public.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vietnam: One family's war, May 12, 2005

By 

James D. Smith "Jim Smith" (Georgia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Our Brother's Keeper: My Family's Journey through Vietnam to Hell and Back (Hardcover)

Jedwin Smith (no relation, but I was once his boss at the Atlanta newspaper where we both worked) has written a spellbinding account of how his brother's death in Vietnam (remember that war?) impacted his family and fueled his own decline into alcohol and depression. Without bitterness or animosity, he relates the unraveling of his family and eventually tells of how he and his siblings came to cope with their brother's death, and to mend their lives and relationships with each other. Part and parcel of the story is his climb from the depths, aided by Vietnam War vets who knew his brother in the field and as always, by the love and strength of his devoted wife, June. Don't think of this as a "war" book. It's not. Rather, this is the story of human relationships, told with insight won the hard way, that will send you to Vietnam War Web sites/books to knock the dust off your memories of that era. Jedwin's a natural-born storyteller and this book will grab you from the first page.