Book Review: Bringing Vincent Home, part 2 (OT) (1968, soldier, burn unit, Texas, Baltimore)

Bringing Vincent Home, by Madeleine Mysko* (Plain View Press, 2007, 182 pages, $14.95)

Bringing Vincent Home was the fifth and final book club selection of the Veterans Book Group in Columbia, Maryland. (For my review itself, read here.) Today we discussed the group’s opinion of the book – with invited guest, author Madeleine Mysko!

During this final session, we were so fortunate to be able to welcome the author herself, Madeleine Mysko, who began by talking about why she wrote the book. It was 10 years in the reminiscing and another 10 in the drafting and rewriting.

Mysko joined the Army not so much out of patriotism as to help soldiers and, as a matter of fact, had always been a writer. She became a nurse, received orders to Viet Nam, got married and, since the Army tried to station (assign) married soldiers together, her travel orders were postponed until her husband could also deploy; however, their contracts expired before they could ship out.

The author began her writing journey with a piece of non-fiction, which morphed into a memoir and finally a work of fiction, a thinly veiled autobiography.

Our book group wholeheartedly recommended Bringing Vincent Home and not only because the author was amongst us on Zoom. One of us had gone to highschool in San Antonio, TX, where Vincent took place. Another pair of former soldiers in the group had been nurses; one, even a burn-unit nurse at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio. One had seen duty in Viet Nam as a young officer whose unit experienced four KIAs. Another had been a Vietnamese linguist. All of us felt welcomed into the book and also felt part of the book because we had lived so much of it: we reminisced about the military culture but also about the Berrigans and the Catonsville Nine.

We were fascinated to hear that the author saw herself in several of the characters though not the protagonist. The novel took place in the late 60s, written by a nurse in 2007 who, at the time the story took place, was the same age as the nurses depicted. The protagonist was a mother of a soldier in 1968 and most of the book club members (and author) are currently in the grandparent age group. Quite a cross-generational experience as the circle goes round and round.

We disagreed as to whether or not the epilogue was necessary, a la The Wonder Years.

Mysko was also concerned whether her memory of the burn unit was authentic: we assured her that most readers would think so and she later suggested that the few who might know burn-units would remember that Vincent is a work of fiction and that authors have poetic license!

Although Bringing Vincent Home could have been titled Kitty’s Journey, we all felt that she was the epitome of moms everywhere – things happened to her and through her. It was amazing how much we came to learn about the other characters through the unobtrusive, calm and supportive personality of Kitty, the mom. Everything happens because of her: people open up to her.

First Look

Ah, the cover: Mysko searched far and wide for the perfect depiction of Kitty’s house, the home to which Vincent would hopefully return; however, the publisher easily convinced her to feature a depiction of the Viet Nam Wall, a decision Mysko is well pleased with.

Bringing Vincent Home is a book I will take down from my bookshelf at least once a year to read again. It should be required for highschool history classes as well as military leadership courses and medical schools.

----------------

Caveat: This book was a selection of the Veteran’s Book Group, a program at the Howard County, MD, Public Library.

* Madeleine Mysko also authored two books of poetry: Crucial Blue and In The Margins as well as the longer 2015 novel Stone Harbor Bound. A former burn-unit nurse in the Army, she currently teaches writing in the Baltimore area.