The Class That Got It

My book, “No Immediate Threat: The story of an American Veteran,” the story of my brother’s life after the Vietnam War, has been officially on the market now since November. In one sense, time has really flown, in another, it seems time has stood still when nothing was seemingly happening. Little did I know that a whole class had been studying my book for weeks when the teacher asked me to come and speak.
It was a creative writing class at the University of St. Mary in Leavenworth, KS. The teacher is a friend of the pastor who officiated at Steve’s memorial service. St. Mary is also the college from which I graduated. “No Immediate Threat” had been one of the books the class had studied this semester. The students seemed to enjoy the book in the sense that they knew many of the landmarks – the VA Hospital, the college, Turner, where we grew up. I was impressed the class had together charted Steve’s story on the wall. The teacher, Patti Carnahan, said some of the students had expressed concern because they had to document their impressions of Steve in one of the exercises.
They need not have been. I noted the impressions, most of which were the ones I was trying to get across in my book. He was confused and burdened. He was an alcoholic, but at times he was also caring and loving. The class seemed to get that although he was troubled, he was always my brother.
Patti told me after a class early on that one of the students came in one morning after reading a few chapters the night before. “He skipped her wedding. How could a brother not go to his sister’s wedding?” the student asked.
These are the types of passages that were the pivotal points in the book. How could I expect readers to understand my brother skipping my wedding when I didn’t at the time, have a grasp on the reason myself?
By the time I spoke with the class they all (in theory) had finished the book. I was not getting questions such as the ones they posed to their teacher while reading. Instead, I was getting questions such as, “When did we first think he had PTSD?” and “Was there anything in his childhood that could have predicted his reaction to the war?”
Some of the questions they asked focused on my thoughts and feelings during certain times, things I don’t think now I communicated very well in my book. As a journalist, I’m trained to separate my feelings from the story, to try my best to be impartial and non-judgmental. When writing a memoir, it is sometimes very hard to remember that it is the emotion the reader is usually seeking. And when a story is so emotional, it is sometimes hard to allow those feelings to surface. Although my thoughts and feelings were important, it is part of the book, my experience with this class made me less neurotic about this being one of the things I felt I did wrong in my first book.
The main point was suppose to be Steve’s story, his telling of it through his actions, records, letters and recollections. My reaction and my family’s reaction to his story were only secondary.
By the time I spoke with them, the class seemed to at least come to expect him to not show at weddings, to disappear when things seemed to be going good for him. It was all part of the “new norm” I described in my story that not only Steve experienced, but many veterans have faced, especially from Vietnam. The class understood that it wasn’t Steve who skipped my wedding, but it was the person who returned from the war; the man with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder who used alcohol to medicate his sleep and finally, to medicate his wakening hours. The man, by that point, that had overtaken the person we once knew. That was the point, not only to tell Steve’s story, but the story of millions of other veterans – and this class got it.
What more could a writer ask for.