Free Book Giveaway: Lizzie's War
Thank you for submitting your entries to the contest. The first ten entries have been received and each of the ten winners will receive a free copy of Lizzie's War.
Lizzie's War by Tim Farrington (HarperCollins Publishers, $24.95)
In this compassionate portrait of war--both on the battlefield and on the home front--the author skillfully alternates between the perspectives of Liz O'Reilly and that of her husband, Mike, a Marine Corps captain fighting in Vietnam.
Back home, pregnant Lizzie copes with the couple's "fearsome foursome"--Katherine, 8, a drama queen; Deborah, 5, a fey child with an otter obsession; and Angus, 7, and Danny, 10, both masters of imaginary war maneuvers. Mike's finely honed belief in duty, honor, and country trumps his "subversive sense of humor," which includes realistic views of the all-too-fallible military. Lonely and overwhelmed, the mother can't help but resent the "relentless gung ho."
Throughout the tale, the rock-solid bond shared by Mike and Liz anchors the characters. Tim Farrington of Virginia depicts an ageless love story in this honest and even humorous novel. For more on the author and Lizzie's War, visit southernliving.com/features.
Virginia author Tim Farrington, author of Lizzie's War, shares insight into the creation of his telling portrait of war and family.
Like the O'Reilly kids in Lizzie's War, Tim Farrington grew up in a Marine Corps family. His latest novel is dedicated to his father, Major F.X. Farrington, USMC (ret.), a veteran of Korea and Vietnam, who was also one of the very first readers of Lizzie's War. Tim, who lives in Virginia Beach also penned The Monk Downstairs, a New York Times Notable Book of 2002 and a national Book Sense Pick, as well as the critically acclaimed novels Blues for Hannah and The California Book of the Dead. He has published short stories and essays in ZYZZYVA, The Sun, and San Francisco Magazine.
Tim Farrington on his father's influence on the writing of Lizzie's War:
"In light of Lizzie's War, I should say that my father is not Mike, but that the Mike character, obviously, owes a lot to my father. Dad was an idealist of sorts, and fought with his own father to be allowed to enlist in the Marine Corps at (age) 17, when the Korean War broke out. He was proud of his career, and served his thirteen months in Vietnam at the height of the escalating war in 1967-68.
I was 10 or 11 at the time and remember well how proud I was to see the newspaper articles with the dateline "Khe Sanh," and know that my father was where the action was. My mother took it harder of course. Dad was very much a Marine, and he passed the values vividly on: as a 6-year-old, for instance, I knew at least half a dozen ways to disable and kill an attacker. It was understood that I would not use them at school. I could also climb the ten-meter rope at the Marine obstacle course in Quantico, Virginia, by the time I was 7; and I could climb it in what would have been the third-best time in my father's company by the time I was 8. Obviously I am still proud of this skill, though the need to employ it seldom arises in my life at this point."
Tim Farrington on inheriting his mother's love of literature:
"I was born a standard Catholic kid, the oldest of four children, and I was blessed with a remarkably literate and book-loving family. Weeknight runs to the library were big family events, and my mother, a drama major and little theater powerhouse, used to recite Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot to us at bedtime, so I grew up with 'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,' Macbeth, and doses of Thornton Wilder and the Irish playwrights as my version of Mother Goose. So there was a firm ground of love of literature there…When my mother died, I found in her papers a copy of a book she had kept for almost 35 years by then, written (and illustrated) by me when I was 7, a profound study of a prodigal teddy bear. So I guess the urge to make stories goes way back for me."
