God Pokes

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I’ve never been much of a Bible thumper—always kept my relationship with God on a somewhat personal basis. And if you’re a Marx or Nietzsche fan you probably don’t want to read this, but in the past couple weeks, God has poked me several times—not in a bad way, but he has gotten my attention. A firm believer in ‘free-will,’ I adhere to the belief that much of what we experience is not the direct intervention of God but the result of our own choices. He just lays the ground rules of cause and effect.

On the other hand, I do believe on occasion God brings about occurrences in peoples’ lives that are often explained as “amazingly coincidental” …or maybe not. It’s not that these things haven’t happened on rare occasions in the past, but four times since just before the first of the year, I’ve been the recipient of messages from angels.

First this prologue is necessary: After six months of misery from knee replacement surgery last year, I swore to myself the I would not do the same on the other knee, although the doctor said this other knee is as bad or worse. I took arthritis meds, and for several months it seemed to be under control. As the already scheduled date for the second surgery approached, I planned to cancel it.

That’s when God poked me the first time, leaving me with a new level of agony in my knee. I couldn’t walk. A few days later, the surgeon’s office called to confirm, and the scheduled surgery now remains on the calendar. Sure, it might be a lucky coincidence but read on for God-poke number two.

Determined to go deer hunting at least once this season, I drove with a friend to a relatively remote area well before daylight the day after New Years. Far out in the Coldwater River bottoms, I attempted to back my pickup down a steep embankment but got off the gravel and jack-knifed the ATV trailer on the grassy slope. At five o’clock in the morning we were looking at a ruined deer hunt and an expensive towing fee, if we could even get one to come out there. That’s when we spotted headlights coming. Remember, we were in the middle of nowhere!

We were so far below the crest of the levee we didn’t have time to signal, but the driver of a white pickup truck stopped and shouted down at us, asking if we needed help. Producing a tow chain, a young man in his mid-twenties, hooked to us and pulled us out in a couple minutes. When I asked what we could give him, he said nothing. I asked his name.

“Micky,” he said.

He climbed in his truck and drove away. My friend asked, “Where did he come from?”

“God,” I said.

Two days later I went to visit an elderly friend in a nursing home who was having physical therapy for a stroke. I have had extensive physical therapy several times and have had no qualms with my therapists. Most have been very good, but the woman who was working with my friend was exceptional, especially since he asks lots of questions. This young woman patiently answered them all, while working with him. She did so in a way I found unusual in that she talked to him as if they were best friends but in a very professional manner. Head and shoulders above any I’ve ever met, I asked her name before she departed.

“Micky,” she said.

Just yesterday, God poked me a fourth time. I needed to purchase an exercise-cycle to use after the upcoming knee surgery and found one for sale locally. I was on my way to buy it when my cell phone rang. It was another friend who I hadn’t spoken with in six or eight months. It was a “butt-dial” he apologetically explained. We talked and I told him where I was going. He said he had an exercise-cycle he would give me for free. I give you my word, all of this is true.

Now, while on a roll like this one, I got to thinking perhaps I should take my two-hundred dollars and make the hour-long drive down to the casino at Tunica. But when I woke up today there was six inches of snow on the ground, and it was still coming down. Do you know when the last time it snowed six inches in Mississippi? And, no, we don’t have snowplows in Mississippi—and there’s no casino trip in my immediate future. God has such a wonderful sense of humor.

By the way, the next Vietnam Series novel should be out sometime this spring. I’ll let you know when it’s available for pre-buy on Amazon. Meanwhile, here’s the link to my Amazon Author Page https://www.amazon.com/stores/Rick-DeStefanis/author/B00H2YO2SS

I look forward to your comments. 

Rick

Mississippi author DeStefanis returns with ‘The Ghost’ sequel

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Mississippi author Rick DeStefanis with the seventh book in his Vietnam War Series. ’Specter of Betrayal’ is a sequel to 2022’s offering, ‘The Ghost.’

   If Rick DeStefanis isn’t on the plains writing westerns — “Rawlins: No Longer Young” kicked off that series in 2018 — you’ll likely find him immersed in environs similar to Cuc Phuong, Vietnam’s oldest national park and a dense jungle of primitive forests inhabited by mosquitoes, dense heat, exotic animals and, once upon a time, predators intent on killing American soldiers.

The tally of DeStefanis’ Vietnam War Series now comes to seven, with the most recent, “Specter of Betrayal: The Ghost II,” arising as a haunting sequel to 2023’s “The Ghost.”

DeStefanis doesn’t just write war stories. He writes war stories laced with meditations on the human condition, exploring themes of guilt, redemption and, especially in these last two books, ghosts of the past.

So it is with “Specter of Betrayal.” But before we get to that book, a caveat from the author: “This is the second book in the two-part story about ‘The Ghost.’ If you haven’t read book one, I strongly recommend that you read it first. Much of what is written in this second book is a continuation of that story, and it will make this one more understandable and enjoyable,” DeStefanis writes in a note to readers.

In other words, you’ll have to do some homework before you get to Book II, and that’s a good thing because this is what I published about Book I, “The Ghost,” a couple of years ago:

‘The Ghost’

Rick DeStefanis writes his own brands of fiction — Southern, Western and military — from his home in North Mississippi, but slide into any one of his much-praised series, and you’re anywhere but in the Magnolia State.

The most recent of those is “The Ghost,” the sixth book in DeStefanis’ Vietnam War canon. Based on true events from during that war, the series has been compared favorably with the likes of early Vietnam writers such as Tim O’Brien (“The Things They Carried”) and James Webb (“Field of Fire”), and it’s likely the author’s early 1970’s experience as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division that so accurately flavors his humanizing stories.

“The Ghost,” though, isn’t quite like any of those earlier offerings. Easily the best of the six — all but the first two, ‘The Gomorrah Principle’ (2013) and ‘Melody Hill’ (2015) are standalone novels — DeStefanis textures this military fiction with Native American spirituality, conceptualizing a harrowing descent into the war’s, and country’s, inner bowels.

Prompted by his father, second lieutenant Martin Shadows visits his Lakota Sioux grandfather just before he departs for Vietnam. Shadows will be in-country as a military intelligence officer, and so foresees little of the danger new officers typically combat. His grandfather — a man he had met only once before, and then as a child — foretells a different future, four visions that cast Shadows in the fiery light of enemy conflict.

The rational soldier discounts the visit with his elder, but being immediately called into a secret mission upon arriving in Vietnam sets his grandfather’s foreshadows alive: Exploits with a North Vietnamese spy, isolation in a North Vietnamese prison and other increasingly horrific events prove the truth of his grandfather’s foresight.

“There are many ways to find a man’s deepest fears,” Shadows is told by a commandant in Vietnam. If only he had listened to his grandfather, Shadows will come to realize, he might not have had to discover this on his own. Set during the Vietnam era, “The Ghost” is a novel for today — both a mixture of superstition and mysticism, and a heralding addition to the reality of American war fiction. And so we turn to book two, a worthy successor to that lead-in.

’Specter of Betrayal’

Haunted by the desperation of the Montagnards, Shadows is drawn back to Vietnam. These indigenous peoples of the Central Highlands of Vietnam participated heavily in the Vietnam War and were recruited by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and its American and Australian allies. And paid the price for their alliance.

Given the close similarities between the spiritual and physical heritages between the Lakota-Sioux and Montagnards, Shadows feels no other choice but to return to the battlefield to help the people he felt he left behind. When he unearths a deep betrayal against those he’s come to rescue, the fire turns “friendly” and it’s up to the officer, amid airstrikes and treachery from his own superiors and supposed protectors, to lead the Montagnards to an American safe zone.

As with his previous offerings, the pacing of “Specter” is unflagging and DeStefanis doesn’t shy away from the brutal realities of combat with scenes built to emphasize the horror of war and the psychological toll it can take on those immersed in it.

Couple this with the author’s vivid sensory capture of the war — you can smell gasoline as the thudding pulse of helicopter blades resonate throughout the canopy — and the result is a novel that pays tribute not only to those who served in Vietnam and elsewhere, but to the lingering effects of betrayal as the lines between friend and foe blur — and loyalties are tested to the extreme.

Reach reviewer Tom Mayer at tmayer@cullmantimes.com.

Kill a Cow–Save the Planet!

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I try to focus my posts on odds and ends, entertaining asides, stuff about writing, positive things, whatever, but seldom do I delve into politics. This will be a first for my Author’s blog right here at www.rickdestefanis.com. With this post, I’m stepping off into some deep stuff all the way up to my eyeballs. Normally, I avoid arguing with the irrational. Afterall, who’s the bigger fool—the fool or he who argues with a fool? My hand is up. Ooogh, ooogh, pick me, teacher!

This is my Alamo! I am standing my ground! I will no longer remain silent. So, here it is, my rant on the elite experts (and I use that term with great sarcasm) who would have us eat bugs and such, so that we might stop climate change by eliminating herds of farting cattle—excuse me, I mean cattle emitting greenhouse gases.

Let’s start with NYC Mayor Eric Adams who told New Yorkers they should eliminate meat and dairy products from their diets to save the planet. Now, we know Mayor Eric isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but like some powerful liberal leaders, you don’t have to be the sharpest tool if you’re the biggest hoe. Never mind. Strike that from the record. Mayor Eric ain’t no hoe. Besides, it’s tacky. Oh, but I digress. Back to the rant at hand.

Some idiot Harvard professor basically said the same thing when he said our domestic cattle herds, dairy herds, and other such groups of four-legged grass-munchers are contributing significantly to greenhouse emissions, insinuating that they must be regulated. Yes, another governmental buracracy is in the works, the CFC–the cow farting commision. I can no longer remian silent, and therefore must challenge this Harvard half-wit with my argument.

You see, I’m from the South, and I have three vices, blondes, bourbon, and fried chicken. The first two are discussions for another time. I’m going to focus on the fried chicken—the mountaintop of southern cuisine. Okay, maybe one of them. It’s sort of like the Tetons in the Rockies. You know–like Mount Barbeque, or Mount Ribeye, but fried chicken is like Grand Teton. But wait! Do chickens fart? Never mind. I’m being tacky again. Strike that from the record. But remember, mess with our fried chicken at your own risk.

Let’s look at it from a more logical standpoint. What about hundreds of thousands of Wildebeests and such roaming the African Serengeti? Should we kill them all? What about the same numbers of caribou and reindeer roaming the Artic? Start killing those reindeer, and God help us if one of ’em is named Rudolph—just sayin’. And think about the elephant and water buffalo herds in Africa and India? If such expert logic is accepted, the disappearance of thousands of elk and bison that once roamed the eastern US should have resulted in an ice age of sorts—right? Just sayin’. I mean the argument is based on a Fauchi-like science that invites such counter-reasoning until I can’t help myself. Are we being greenhouse gas-lighted?

If only we could have the support of the thousands who derive their living from those domestic herds–might we succeed? Perhaps. Depends on how the woke folks deal with them. Maybe, it’ll be a commission on the insurrection of the steak eaters. They’ll hold a congressional investigation and enlist the DOJ to begin issuing warrants. Heck, they might even conjure up an excutive order for businesses to begin serving stem–cell steaks made with 3-D printers, I think not, but that may be a good way to tell just how committed some of the climate change zealots really are to eliminating our T-bone steaks. I nominate Gretta Thornburg to head up the first stem cell steak test group. We’ll serve stem-cell steaks (well done) with humus on mint leaves and cucumber water. For entertainment, we can have Joe and Cornpop sing Camptown Races.

Okay, I can carry my depravity only so far. Thank you for letting me vent.