Reviewed by Kat

TITLE: A Soldier’s Wish

SERIES: The Christmas Angel #5

AUTHOR: N.R. Walker

PUBLISHER: BlueHeart Press

LENGTH: 224 pages

RELEASE DATE: December 2, 2018

BLURB:

The year is 1969…

Gary Fairchild is proud to be a hippie college student, and he protests the Vietnam War because he believes in love and peace. To him, it isn’t just a counterculture movement—it’s a way of life. When tickets to the Aquarium Exposition—3 Days of Peace & Music, or Woodstock, as it was better known, go on sale, there’s no way he isn’t going.

Richard Ronsman is a sheltered farm boy who lives in the shadow of his overbearing father. He’s hidden his darkest secret to earn his father’s love, but nothing is ever good enough—not even volunteering for the Vietnam War. And with just a few days left before he’s deployed, a striking hippie invites him to join them at a music festival.

Three days of music, drugs, rain, mud, and love forged a bond between these two very different men that would shape the rest of their lives. They share dreams and fears, and when Richard is shipped off to war, they share letters and love. For Richard’s first Christmas home, he is gifted a special angel ornament that just might make a soldier’s wish come true.

REVIEW:

N.R. completely hit it out of the ballpark for me with this one!

Gary Fairchild is the epitome of the hippie college student of the late 60’s. Longer hair, beard, long sideburns…he had it all. And he and his buddies were on their way to what was billed as an epic music event…“The Aquarian Exposition—3 Days of Peace & Music” aka Woodstock! While at a roadside diner in upper New York, Gary spots a sad and lost looking young man that appears to be military. He befriends the man and invites him along with them to the concert. Gary’s friend Lyman isn’t to happy with a soldier in their van. Lyman, and his girlfriend Kat are big anti-government protesters. But what emerges from this way too brief moment in time is destined to change both Gary and Richard’s lives for ever.

I connected with both Richard and Gary immediately. Gary because he was wise beyond his years and his thoughtful and caring ways with the naïve Richard warmed my heart. 1969 was not an easy or acceptable time to be gay and he understood that. In fact, it was illegal in America to engage in homosexual relationships. But in rural farming country it wasn’t just illegal it was unholy and the homophobic religious people made it clear what they thought you were and how fast you would be damned into hell. Poor Richard had lived with that judgement and condemnation all his life. He even joined up to serve in the military as a way to try and prove to his father he that he was a real man. But Gary opened his eyes, and heart, to Richard and showed him what true, pure love really was. Their letters were risky but they got Richard through the hell on earth of Vietnam. But it was Gary’s true love that gave Richard the strength to survive and get strong.

I loved the Christmas Angel being a guardian angel for the broken Richard protecting him while Gary had to go to work. And I especially loved that it was a way for Richard to bring with home a happy memory of his youth and his Grandmother’s Christmas tradition. I really loved that Gary embraced that tradition and it became important to him too. But what made me smile was that they turned her around when they were getting ready to get frisky, like she was real and they had to protect her sweetness.

This book really reminded me of life back then. In August 1969 I was preparing to enter high school when all the parents in the neighborhood were talking about that crazy and appalling hippie concert that had just happened on a cow farm clear across the United States in upper New York. It was so against all their beliefs…free sex, drugs and rock-n-roll…that they had all forbidden us kids to even own the album that was eventually released. I used to listen to that music at a house I babysat at and dreamed of seeing all those amazing acts preforming live on stage there. They tried to have a much smaller version of it in Oregon called Vortex and I was promptly told an absolute NO to even considering going to it. Woodstock was the epicenter of the free love movement. It was so “antiestablishment” and the bane of the conservative parents of America, most of the dad’s having fought in WWII and were outraged at the protests against Vietnam. When I entered high school that year girls still weren’t permitted to even wear pants to school yet. I grew up in a suburban bedroom community outside of Portland, Oregon that was far from the radical Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco to our south. But the news each night showed the sit-ins protesting the war in Berkley and the continued body count of US soldiers dying each day. By my sophomore year we were praying for the return of our older classmates that had been drafted and shipped out. Several of my friends and my BIL and my DIL’s step dad had served there and they have since both passed from the chemicals used there that gave both of them brain cancer.

This book was very real to me. It caught the true essence of this time period and the beliefs of the older generation and their refusal to accept that times and beliefs were changing and that they were challenging the establishment. It was an extremely volatile and challenging time to be a youth in America. Teachers taught of our rights in school and our parents refused to listen and chastised our beliefs. Our boys were forced to serve in a war that they did not support or were forced to flee for asylum in Canada. I had a couple of friends that did that and never returned.

There is absolutely no doubt that this book will be on my top 10 of 2018 list. If you are looking for an amazing book, that has great insight into those volatile years in US history, including the Vietnam War and society’s homophobic views on same sex unions, then this book is an exceptional awesome choice. I know that it is part of a Christmas collection but I think it rises so much higher than that. It gives a view of the life and struggles of being a young man forced to survive. It shows the struggles of our gay and lesbian youth through such oppression that it was actually illegal to engage in such activities. It shows the bigotry that was thrust upon our youth by the self righteous churches and their homophobic beliefs. It is a book of heroism, struggle and total and complete true love. This book is going to stick with me for a long time. I can’t recommend this book enough and I hope that you share it with as many people as possible. It needs to be read and people need to be reminded of what our youth of that era endured and fought for. I know that I can only give it 5 Hearts but it deserves so much more! I never thought that NR could out do her book “The Weight of it All” but she surpassed it even more than I could believe.

RATING: 

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