Memorial Day is serious business to me. I buy geraniums for the cemetery, applaud our Veterans in the local parade, and then watch nearly every war movie TCM can throw at me over its three-day marathon.
What I’ve never done until now—and what I’m recommending you do too—is to add another activity to your Memorial Day salutes. This year, pay your respects with a book.
You might start with one or two by Bobbie Ann Mason, award-winning novelist, memoirist, and a member of Mansfield University’s English department back in the 70s.
Heard of her?
I’m a Bobbie Ann groupie. Every now and then, when I have time to dash into Barnes & Noble, I aim for the alphabetized stacks in the back of the store, where they stash the classics and the dated new releases that still have literary heft and staying power.
I find the “Ms” section and scan the spines for M-a-s-o-n. And then there she is. Bobbi Ann Mason. She gave me my first taste of journalism back in 1975 and then followed up with a class in feature writing in 1976, so I am delighted and proud to be looking at her name on all these books. There is a mere one degree of separation between me and Bobbie Ann. And I think that’s pretty darned fabulous.
Believe me, there is no wrong time of year to read Mason’s work, but this month, for Memorial Day, make time for
In Country,
her first novel published in 1985, or
Girl in the Blue Beret
, from 2011. Both delve into the lives of our warriors, their ordeals, their sacrifices, and their anguish.
Blue Beret
relied upon the real-life rescue tale of Mason’s father-in-law Barney Rawlings (his son Roger was also involved with the MU English Department during the 70s) as the basis of her novel. Rawlings, copilot of a B-17, was shot down over Nazi-occupied France. He was extracted, hidden, and escorted back to the fight, thanks to the Resistance and a special contact-: the girl in the blue beret. Yes. She’s real. (Mason shares the true story and characters behind her novel in a
New Yorker
piece here:
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-real-girl-in-the-blue-beret
)
In Country
is a Vietnam story. Set in western Kentucky, Mason’s home turf, the novel focuses on a teenaged girl’s obsession with her father’s life and death in Vietnam. Samantha Hughes never knew her father but is desperate to collect music, artifacts, letters, and diaries from his abbreviated life. She relies upon her Uncle Emmett, another Vietnam vet, to offer up scraps of information about his experiences in country. Emmett is unattached, unemployed, emotionally unsteady, and unwilling to venture back in time to satisfy his niece. He simply can’t talk about Vietnam.
I read
In Country
when it first debuted but re-read it a few weeks ago to prepare for this blog post. I loved getting reacquainted with Mason’s prose and her Hopewell, Kentucky characters who hang out at McDonald’s, bag groceries at Kroger, or who never miss an episode of M*A*S*H. Her sly good humor surfaces often, as do references to pop culture of the time. But at the core of everything is the intimate Vietnam war story that Sam just can’t grasp. My heart ached for her and Emmett and her killed-in-action father.
And maybe that’s how it should be around Memorial Day. Hearts aching for our soldiers and the families left behind, missing them forever. The solitude of reading allowed me to pause in my own time and think about how I might have responded to being mired in jungle muck, praying for deliverance. With each new page I contemplated warfare and what it must have been like to fight to the death so far from home. I wondered about myself at 18. Could I have done it?
I grant you, these are not easy, light-hearted asides. But the simple act of breaking away from the fiction to think about the real sacrifices made on our behalf seems like a good and grateful thing to do. Especially now.
By the way,
In Country
got the Hollywood treatment in 1989 and starred Emily Lloyd, Bruce Willis, and Joan Allen. I watched it the day after I finished the novel. The book was better, but I liked watching Willis's take on Emmett. The movie also stayed true to Mason’s poignant final pages, set at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. I sat there and blubbered, just like I did with the book.
To learn more about Mason and her other publications, which include a Pulitzer-nominated memoir
Clear Springs
and the award-winning
Shiloh and Other Stories
, visit her website:
http://www.bobbieannmason.net/
The Writer
Linda Roberts Miller ’76 is collaborating editor for The Mountaineer. She spends each fall coaching college-bound students in preparation to write their best admission application essays. Linda’s worked in the newspaper and magazine industries and in higher education public relations. Some of her recent memoir pieces have appeared in The Furious Gazelle, Halcyon Days, and Dead Housekeeping.
