Valley of The Purple Hearts

Valley of The Purple Hearts

The 101st Airborne West of Hue after The 1968 Tet Offensive

Soldier moving through a field looking up at a mountain
Award-Winning Novel Valley of The Purple Hearts

When eighteen-year-old Buck Marino first meets Rolley Zwyrkowski, he little realizes the young sergeant and their next year together in Vietnam will change his life forever. The months following the 1968 Tet Offensive and the battles of the 101st Airborne between Hue and Phu Bai, and westward into the A Shau Valley, provide the backdrop for a story about boys becoming men in a paradoxical war. And when he meets Army nurse Janie Jorgensen, Buck believes he has found the love of his life only to crash into the reality that the war has left his heart and soul lost in a futureless void.

 

Winner of the 2017 Best Indie Book Award for Mainstream Literary Fiction, Valley of The Purple Hearts follows the men of Second Squad through the shadowy jungles and mountains of I-Corps as they fight main force Viet Cong and NVA regulars. With constant enemy contact, booby-traps, sniper fire, and all-out firefights, Buck and his buddies follow their squad leader, Rolley, who puts the lives of his men first. As Rolley faces the young and inept Lieutenant Mallon, Buck realizes his squad leader is becoming jaded and has lost his sense of humor. When the young sergeant sacrifices his safety for that of his men, Buck must step up to face Mallon in the heat of battle, and try to save his friend. 

BIB award

Valley of the Purple Hearts Purchase Options

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You may also enjoy my other books below:

Melody Hill: A Vietnam War Novel

Gomorrah Principle: A Vietnam War Sniper Story

Raeford’s MVP: Military Fiction with a Love Story

Tallahatchie: Southern Fiction and Dark Comedy

Rawlings, No Longer Young: A Western Historical Fiction Novel

Recent Posts

Kill a Cow–Save the Planet!

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 stemcell 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.

 



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