Faith of Our Sons: A Father's Wartime Diary

by Frank Schaeffer

In 1998, novelist Frank Schaeffer's eighteen-year-old son John joined the Marines straight out of prep school. Their ensuing journey, recounted in the bestselling Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps, struck a fervent chord amongst the many Americans with a family member in the military. In Faith of Our Sons, Frank Schaeffer picks up his family's ongoing story as Corporal John Schaeffer is deployed to the Middle East on the day Gulf War II begins. Schaeffer's moving and timely account of the universal experience of losing a child— either temporarily or permanently—to war and his attendant emotions (from pride to panic to rage and back again) is punctuated throughout by the voices of the many others in Frank's situation, thousands of parents and children, who continue to pour their hearts out to the Schaeffers in countless letters since the publication of Keeping Faith—from those waiting anxiously for loved ones to come home to those who know they never will. No other book addresses the more intimate, but in some ways just as difficult and heroic side of the wartime experience: that of those waiting at home, praying for the safety of their loved ones.

Genres: Military Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published March 26, 2004

About the author

Frank Schaeffer is a New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen books. Frank is a survivor of both polio and an evangelical/fundamentalist childhood, an acclaimed writer who overcame severe dyslexia, a home-schooled and self-taught documentary movie director, a feature film director of four low budget Hollywood features Frank has described as “pretty terrible.” He is also an acclaimed author of both fiction and nonfiction and an artist with a loyal following of international collectors who own many of his oil paintings. Frank has been a frequent guest on the Rachel Maddow Show on NBC, has appeared on Oprah, been interviewed by Terri Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air and appeared on the Today Show, BBC News and many other media outlets. He is a much sought after speaker and has lectured at a wide range of venues from Harvard’s Kennedy School to the Hammer Museum/UCLA, Princeton University, Riverside Church Cathedral, DePaul University and the Kansas City Public Library.

Reviews

[Rick Fifield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not many think about the family left behind when a loved one joins the military or gets deployed overseas or to a war zone. This book looks at those issues through one families journey, with other families sharing their experiences.

[Michael Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having lived through a deployment of my son in Iraq, it was good to see my emotions when my son was "down range" were validated and it brought closure to me.