Contact:
janet.simmelink@stairwaystories.com

Through all the research and writing of this book, its working title was The Joe Boy Letters. For here was the heart of the project:  Hundreds of earnest letters — written over two years by a homesick boy doing his best to inform and entertain his family — had rested quietly in one drawer or another for nearly 60 years.

In 2001, my mother decided it was time to do something with them. Soon, she knew, a yet-untold story would completely fade away. So she taught herself how to use a computer and typed up every letter, reverently arranging them into notebooks. And then, after years of not knowing quite how to proceed, she thrust them into the hands of the only professional writer she knew, with the order to turn them into a book.

I did not want the job.

At the time, I had deadlines and commitments of my own. Plus, it wasn’t my type of writing. Though my degree is in journalism, nearly all of my professional life centered on public relations and marketing communications: Booklets, brochures, position papers, media relations, speeches, ghost-written articles, feature stories for fundraising magazines, and so on. I’d taught public relations writing at the University of Washington and later worked primarily on content for healthcare websites. As more years passed and those notebooks lived on my shelf, I’d utter the occasional reassurance that I would get to them when I had time.

And then, one day, I took them off the shelf, and read each one. Yes, they were sometimes funny and often poignant, but the young Marine’s letters lacked context as to what was happening around him. If simply bound together and put into a book, they would not tell a cohesive, compelling story.  And certainly, only a fraction of the letters could be included, though all could be used as background material. Despite my earlier reluctance, I started to hear this young man calling to me.

            For time, indeed, marches on. And despite repeated cries of We will never forget! we do, in fact, forget. We forget about the ordinary young men, and now women as well, who leave their families and their plans for the future behind them as they march off to serve their country. Thousands stand ready to fight, and for each one there is a story worthy of being told. This one story, it seemed, was my job to tell, after all.

            My editor did not like The Joe Boy Letters as a book title. The boy became a man, she insisted, and that title did not do him justice. So I read through his letters yet again and found a theme I hadn’t noticed before.  Joe Boy was determined to be as strong, as resilient, and as rugged as the rest of the men around him. Considering all he and his fellow Marines went through, I do believe he succeeded.

            — Janet Simmelink

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