Wendy H. Adair

This story follows present-day Robin Carter as she cares for her grandmother and begins to dig into what really happened to her grandfather Martin’s disappearance in the Vietnam war.

Martin has been MIA for fifty years when suddenly his footlocker is delivered to his widow. Inside the footlocker are Martin’s journals. As Robin reads them, she gets a sense of the honest and brave man her grandfather was. She also suspects there has been a coverup in the details of his death.

Adair’s vivid descriptions made me feel like I was there looking over Robin and Martin’s shoulders. It was an emotional read as the coverup's depth and consequences emerged. About halfway through the book, I found that I just couldn’t put it down. I could feel the heartbreak Robin’s grandmother experienced when she lost the love of her life just as their marriage had hardly begun. Martin, trapped in Vietnam, would never see his unborn daughter. I was breathlessly hoping Robin would find her grandfather's remains before her aging grandmother’s memories of him faded away.

Overall, I loved the book, loved the writing style. Adair uses excerpts from Martin’s 1969 journals to move the reader effortlessly back and forth between past and present. However, I did get tired of the excessive cursing and the way-too-frequent mentions of the “swear jar.”… (more)