To book Frank Schaeffer to speak, please contact Lisa Darden at HUP Talent and Booking Agency (http://www.huptalentandbooking.com/frank_shaeffer.html) by email: ask4darden@aol.com or by phone: (240) 446-1554.
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See Book Club page for special offer to book clubs!
Frank will participate in your meeting!
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"Faith Of Our Sons -- A Father's Wartime Diary"
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From Publishers Weekly
In this follow-up to Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps (2002), which Schaeffer coauthored with his son, Corporal John Schaeffer, Frank and his wife confront the reality of their son's deployment to Iraq in February 2003. Although the third sentence of this "Diary of Deployment" is "I'm elated for my boy because he sounds happy," the fourth is "I'm elated in the same way one is 'elated' by looking over a cliff." Over the ensuing months, Frank and Genie work to calm their nerves, get and share information from and with other parents, and help parents whose children are killed in battle cope with their losses-some of whose letters are included here, as are letters from John, who returns to his U.S. base safely in December. Schaeffer is unflinching in recounting day-to-day dreams, fears and coping mechanisms, and in registering his own, and others', reactions to the politics of the war. Although most parents of soldiers don't write Op-Eds for the Washington Post or appear on Oprah, Schaeffer is careful to try to give voice to "ordinary" parents and soldiers from all branches of the service, and that care is what makes this volume a valuable resource for other parents of military personal.
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Father keeps 'Faith'
Sequel by Marine's dad poignant wartime diary
By Laurence Washington, Special To The News
May 14, 2004
Author Frank Schaeffer's stomach flipped as the words of his son, Marine Cpl. John Schaeffer, sank in. "Dad, I don't want to rain on your parade, but a situation has arisen and it looks like I'll be redeployed next week. Right now I'm the most qualified person available to do the job. They need me, Dad."
In his book, Faith Of Our Sons: A Father's Wartime Diary, Schaeffer picks up where he left off in Keeping Faith, the best-selling memoir he co-wrote with John.
Schaeffer's story, about John joining the Marines straight out of prep school, touched hundreds of military families whose loved ones had joined the service, post 9-11.
Schaeffer also wrote an op-ed piece for The Washington Post about how it took John's enlistment to connect him to his country and make him see who was defending our freedoms.
As a result, Schaeffer receives daily e-mails and letters from well-wishers and antiwar protesters, which he patiently answers every day.
John's enlistment was an unexpected and unsettling surprise for his parents. Schaeffer writes that it was hard enough to send John's older sister and brother off to college.
Four years later, on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, John volunteers to fight in the Middle East, and is deployed to Afghanistan the day after Gulf War II begins.
John is enthusiastic about serving his country. Schaeffer recalls John wanted to be a "real Marine," not an oddball Marine celebrating his 15 minutes of fame because he had written a bestseller with his dad.
John's deployment has Schaeffer wondering, since the book was his idea, had he killed his son? However, he tries to suppress his fears and tells John that both he and his mother are proud and scared about his decision.
After a tour of duty, John returns home for a short time, only to volunteer for an intel mission back in Afghanistan. " 'This is my job, what I signed up to do. They need me,' said John. 'Sorry, Dad,' he added quietly."
The Schaeffers are supportive and try not to press John for details about his decision. So far the Marines had been good for John, Schaeffer notes. He recalls John wanted the training and discipline of the Marine corps. That's why he joined.
Faith of Our Sons is Schaeffer's diary, poignantly punctuated with John's poems, e-mails from his mother and other GIs' parents and relatives who have a family member fighting in the Gulf, as well as veterans.
Schaeffer started the book the day John announced his first deployment and concludes the story with the end of John's second tour.
Although John could never tell his parents exactly where he was or what he was doing, he kept in touch via satellite phone. He also sent home letters and photos from disposable cameras his parents mailed to him.
The Schaeffers felt John would be safer in Afghanistan than Iraq. However, they can't help but worry whenever news agencies report the Taliban and al-Qaida are stepping up attacks against U.S. Marines.
John reassures his family that he's OK and that the news is usually exaggerated. To the surprise of his parents, John even jokes about a kid who tried to take a potshot at him with a 19th-century rifle.
" 'What did you do?' Schaeffer asks.
" 'Nothing.'
" 'What!' I exclaimed.
" 'What do you expect me to do,' John answered calmly, 'put a bullet between some kid's eyes? Anyway, the gun was some sort of single-shot musket about a hundred years old. If it had been a AK or something, then of course that would have been different.' "
John's usually cavalier attitude begins to change during his second tour. The Schaeffers hadn't heard from John for a month. Then the couple receives the following e-mail:
"Dear Mom and Dad: I have learned that the right thing and the necessary thing are not synonymous, rarely are they even in the same ballpark. It's very depressing to see the results of some necessary actions, it's never pure, and there is no purity here. I have started to pray again . . .
"In a natural state a human will kill, and kill not always for necessity, but for convenience as well. The only way that I know I am still me is that I hate that fact; I hate it more than anything I have ever known. Some of what I have had to do here will eat my soul for the rest of my life."
Faith of Our Sons offers a different perspective than many of the books written a year after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Schaeffer writes candidly about what military families go through having a loved one in harm's way.
He says he's not proud of the careless attitude he once had about America's servicemen and women. And he's not proud of the way the government sloughs off military families when it's done with them, or of the sanctimonious left that seems to want economic justice for everyone except military men and women. He's not proud of the American right, either, a group that says it supports our troops, he writes, but makes sure its kids don't serve.
Faith of Our Sons will be an enlightening and heartfelt read for civilians who take their freedoms for granted, and life-affirming for military families and servicemen and women who work their 9 to 5 actually 24/7 in harm's way protecting our country.
Laurence Washington is co-publisher and Editor of Blackflix.com and teaches journalism at Metropolitan State College of Denver.
Copyright 2004, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.
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| “We have an all-volunteer military, but we, the platoon of parents, wives, children and husbands of those who serve, are given only one choice: to love or not. Our job is to struggle with our fears in plain sight of the carefree lives we used to live, and in plain sight of our friends and leaders who have no direct involvement; no loved ones at risk… no skin in the game.”
In 1998, novelist Frank Schaeffer’s eighteen-year-old son, John, joined the Marines out of high school (inspiring their best-selling book, Keeping Faith, A Father-Son Story of Love and the United States Marine Corps). Then, on February 18, 2003--the first day of Gulf War II--Corporal John Schaeffer was deployed to the Middle East.
Frank Schaeffer’s powerful account of having a son in the war zone is punctuated by the voices heard via his correspondence with dozens of other home front families; from those hoping for loved ones to come home to those who know they never will.
Unforgettably moving, beautifully written and truly provocative, Faith of our Sons tells us the story of a war through the unseen lives of those among us waiting at home, praying for the safety of their husbands and wives, their sons and daughters.
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“Diary of Deployment
February 17, 2003 [First Entry]
John called. He said he will be deployed! I'm elated for my boy because he sounds so happy. I'm elated in the same way one is 'elated' by looking over a cliff. Adrenaline and terror also surge.
We are about to go to war in Iraq and are already at war in Afghanistan. John could have sat out the action at a desk. I asked him if he volunteered for this mission.
'Yes, I did, but don't tell anyone.'
'You mean Mom?'
'Yes. She'll be really upset if she knows I volunteered.'”
So begins the next chapter in the story of Cpl John Schaeffer, as told by his father Frank Schaeffer.
In 1998, Frank and Genie Schaeffer’s eighteen-year-old son enlisted in the United States Marine Corps… and then told his parents. John and Frank Schaeffers’ ensuing experiences of learning how to be a U.S. Marine (and a Marine’s parent), and of reevaluating their understandings of the words service and duty, were recounted in Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps. Their very personal story struck such a fervent chord amongst the many Americans with a family member in the military, that it inspired personal communications from three American Presidents and propelled the authors onto Oprah, 20/20 and Nightline and their book onto the New York Times extended bestseller’s list
Then on February 18, 2003--the day Gulf War II began--John Schaeffer was deployed to the Middle East.
Faith of our Sons is Frank Schaeffer’s moving and timely account of what it’s like to send your child to war, and the powerful emotions attendant on that experience (from panic to pride to rage and back again). But as we read the homefront story of Frank and Genie Schaeffer, punctuated by the occasional treasured call or e-mailed poem from their son, we are also hearing the voices of many others in the same situation.
“Yesterday I spent another five or six hours responding to the e-mails. So far, I’ve gotten over two thousand messages… A few weeks ago, I complained to Genie, “How can I answer them all?” but now night after night—usually at two in the morning—I find myself back at my computer, reading and answering each message. I’m beginning to think that I need my new correspondents a lot more then they need me.”
Frank’s on-line relationship with dozens of other similarly proud and worried homefront families (who have contacted Frank and Genie since the publication of Keeping Faith), now becomes the Schaeffer’s lifeline, pulling them into to a courageous and generous community of largely ignored Americans from all races and backgrounds, while also making them look even harder at issues of class and duty, at which Americans currently pay the high cost of service, and why.
Frank Schaeffer is the author of three novels including the just published "Zermatt," "Saving Grandma", and the highly acclaimed best seller "Portofino." His novels have been translated into eight languages. Frank is also the co-author, with his son John Schaeffer, Cpl. USMC, "Keeping Faith--A Father-Son Story About Love And The United States Marine Corps." Frank has worked as a movie director and artist and lived in Switzerland, England, South Africa and the USA, where he resides in Boston and New York City.
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