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Published Dec 2008
288 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
In 2005, First Sergeant Charles Monroe King began to write what would become
a two-hundred-page journal for his son in case he did not make it home from the
war in Iraq. Charles King, forty-eight, was killed on October 14, 2006, when an
improvised explosive device detonated under his Humvee on an isolated road near
Baghdad. His son, Jordan, was seven months old.
A Journal for Jordan is a mother's letter to her son – fierce in its
honesty – about the father he lost before he could even speak. It is also a
father's advice and prayers for the son he will never know.
A father figure to the soldiers under his command, Charles moved naturally into
writing to his son. In neat block letters, he counseled him on everything from
how to withstand disappointment and deal with adversaries to how to behave on a
date. And he also wrote, from his tent, of recovering a young soldier's body,
piece by piece, from a tank–and the importance of honoring that young man's
life. He finished the journal two months before his death while home on a
two-week leave, so intoxicated with love for his infant son that he barely
slept.
Finally, this is the story of Dana and Charles together – two seemingly
mismatched souls who loved each other deeply. She was a Pulitzer Prize-winning
editor for the New York Times who struggled with her weight. He was a
decorated military officer with a sculpted body who got his news from
television. She was impatient, brash, and cynical about love. He was
excruciatingly shy and stubborn, and put his military service before anything
else. In these pages, we relive with Dana the slow unfolding of their love,
their decision to become a family, the chilling news that Charles has been
deployed to Iraq, and the birth of their son.
In perhaps the most wrenching chapter in the book, Dana recounts her search for
answers about Charles's death. Unsatisfied with the army's official version of
what happened and determined to uncover the truth, she pored over summaries of
battalion operations reports and drew on her well-honed reporting skills to
interview the men who were with Charles on his last convoy, his commanding
officers, and other key individuals. In the end, she arrived at an account of
Charles's death – and his last days in his battalion – that was more difficult
to face than the story she had been told, but that affirmed the decency and
courage of this warrior and father.
"Unflinching and thorough, Canedy offers a sense of shared grief with other families whose loved ones have died in the war." - Publishers Weekly.
"A gut-wrenching memoir of love unexpectedly eviscerated." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Her keen editorial eye prevents the material from becoming overly sentimental. For the many widows of the Iraq War and anyone who wants to understand their plight." - Library Journal.
"Some of the most gripping moments occur when Canedy uses her skills as a reporter to interview those who witnessed the attack, reconstructing the events from multiple accounts. She received conflicting versions of King’s death, and quickly learned that the military often sanitizes the story." - New York Times.
"Squeezed between the joys of new motherhood at 40 and the agony of loss, Canedy used her skills as a reporter to dig beneath the official story of King's death. While parts of this memoir can be flat or cloying, these investigative passages are gripping." - Cleveland Plain Dealer.
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