How Can You Mend This Purple Heart

by T L Gould

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Book cover for How Can You Mend This Purple Heart

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Winner of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation's James Webb Award for distinguished fiction

In this riveting first novel, author T. L. Gould draws on his experiences in a military hospital with severely wounded Marines recovering from the Vietnam War. He has created a plain-truth, no-holds-barred narrative, stark in its simplicity, detail, and humor. From dressing changes and morphine drips to off-site forays under a fence and into neighborhood bars and brothels, Gould chronicles the precipitous journey to recovery of the men of Ward 2B: how they learned to walk again, to love again, and to triumph over crippling injuries.

How Can You Mend This Purple Heart is not a story about combat in the jungles of Vietnam. It is a story about boys who returned from combat as men--men who left the better part of their youth, a bit of their souls, and a lot of their flesh in a battlefield on the other side of the world. It's a story about their longing to recapture the spirit of boyhood and rekindle the optimism and fearlessness of youth. And it's about their struggle to be whole again--or at the very least, to feel whole. It chronicles a journey of love, redemption, sorrow, and joy; a journey of pain and anger . . . and a journey of hope. But most of all, a journey of the human spirit and its triumph over the most impossible odds.

How Can You Mend This Purple Heart is a tribute to all the combat-wounded veterans of past and present conflicts. May they find the strength to continue their lives' missions and know that the entire nation is grateful for their sacrifices.
  • ISBN10 1935271040
  • ISBN13 9781935271048
  • Publish Date 24 March 2009
  • Publish Status Active
  • Imprint Ideas Into Books Westview
  • Format Paperback (US Trade)
  • Pages 254
  • Language English