Greetings to my faithful readers, fellow veterans, and anyone willing to share a few minutes of their time with me. This newsletter/blog post will update you on my writing efforts and other matters relating to my books. I apologize for not writing sooner or more often, but another knee replacement (the glory of too many impacts with the ground while with the 82nd Airborne) has slowed me somewhat. Yes, an eighteen-year-old will do some crazy things.
First, I wish to provide a clarification on the Rawlins Saga. Several reviewers have referred to it as a “spin-off of the Yellowstone 1883 Series.” That’s quite understandable. After all, two of the primary characters in Taylor Sheridan’s 1883 story are a Confederate Civil War veteran and his wife who lead a wagon train of immigrants westward. Sound familiar? There are other striking similarities, but it’s incorrect to say the Rawlins Saga is a spin-off of that series, because while Yellowstone 1883 was first shown in 2021, Rawlins books #1 and #2 were published in 2018 and 2019 respectively. I like to think if there was a spin-off, it was Yellowstone 1883. But enough of that business. If that’s the case, I’m glad I could help them out.
Some of you may have noticed a shuffling (so to speak) of my books into three newly named series. First The Rawlins Trilogy, since it is now four books with a fifth planned, is now The Rawlins Saga. The Vietnam War Series has been divided into two series. The first, (A Soldier’s Heart—Combat in Vietnam) includes the five books whose stories are told as they occurred during the war. The second series (Rising from the Ashes—Battles Beyond Vietnam) are those mostly told from a veteran’s post-war perspective and include Raeford’s MVP, The Birdhouse Man, and Miss Molly’s Final Mission. My Southern novel, Tallahatchie, remains out there by itself.
And lastly, several readers have asked about the next book. The one I previously mentioned was to be in the Soldier’s Heart Series, but that plan has been dropped due to complications beyond my control. The next book will be in the Rawlins Saga, and I will write more about it in the next newsletter. Thanks for reading and writing your reviews of my books. I truly appreciate your comments and enjoy reading them. They keep me wanting to write. I’ll try to get the next newsletter out a little sooner, and until next time if you recieved this update via email and want to see a complete list of all my available books, click the button below, and it will take you to the website. Best Wishes,
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.
This latest newsletter from www.rickdestefanis.com comes to you with a subject that is of almost religious significance in the South. And before I go further, fair warning and a disclaimer: You may want to avert your eyes if you aren’t from the South, and shield your device’s screen from children and easily offended individiuals such as snowflakes. Yes, you’re about to read words of near obscene description. This article may include such offensive language as bacon, dipped in egg, or rolled in corn meal.
Yes, we here in the South tend to put a number of things in that quasi–near religious catagory, including college football, NASCAR, deer hunting, and well maybe a few others, but one of them for sure is fried food. If you’re a vegan, or from California or one of those other third-world states, you may wish to go now, but we have many converts, perhaps even your next door neighbors, who have seen the light and realized it’s the one on the electonic thermometer telling them the grease has reached that perfect 350 degree temperature.
Fried is a word spoken with reverence in hallowed kitchens from Wilmington to Waco and everywhere in between. Fried is a word that emotes culinary dreams of near orgasmic delight. We can begin with the simple and the obvious: fried chicken, French fries, fried eggs, but like Forrest Gump’s army buddy, Bubba, when he described the ways to fix shrimp, a near endless litany of other fried foods can be named: fried okra, fried green tomatoes, fried catfish, fried oysters, fried venison chops, fried pork chops, fried bacon, fried sausage, country fried steak, fried corn, fried egg-plant, fried….I think you get the idea.
The problem with frying is that it is as much art as it is science. Which is to say, don’t go buy your fried chicken just anywhere and expect it to be good. If it’s from any of the major fast food chains it’ll be greasy and tasteless. The best way to get top-notch fried food is to find you a good fry-cook and marry her. Anyway, I’ll leave you with a quote from one of the best fry-cooks I’ve ever known, my old pappy-in-law: “A good fry-cook can make a huntin’ boot taste good, but fast food restaurants have ruined the art.”
The latest from the writing world is that Valley of the Purple Hearts broke a thousand reviews on Amazon, and I finished the first draft of Ghost II–Specter of Betrayal. I am working steadily in hopes of getting it out by late Spring. There are a couple of knee replacements coming that may slow me up a bit, but soon as my pit crew at Campbell’s Clinic in Memphis get my new tires installed, I’ll be back in the race. I hope all my readers had a good Christmas, and I wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year.
