Fontaine - Paperback

by Linda Carroll Barnes (Author), John Majure (Photographer)

A Southern portrait of 1968. A year of waiting...for a young military wife and family in a small Mississippi town. Based on true events.

In the turbulent shadow of the Vietnam War a young mother keeps vigil in the still quiet of a front porch worn and smooth under her feet, the sultry air of pecan groves heavy with waiting -- waiting for a letter, that fragile link to her husband, a helicopter pilot flying through the smoke-filled carnage of battlefields a world away, reachable now only in memories.

As he takes his place among the armies of other soldiers bravely facing death daily, she begins her own relentless, invisible war against enemies she cannot see -- fear, loneliness and despair, colliding with violent social unrest descending on her from the perimeters of a changing world.

In the circular, monotonous sameness of hours and days so well known to soldiers wives she explores who she is and finds courage, endurance and hope all around her in the forests and country roads, the church pews and kitchens of her small corner of the world.

There is comfort here among the small-town people long accustomed to leaning on each other. Their conversations are no longer idle things, and their letters to each other are the distilled footprints that will later be called history. Fontaine is her town, and theirs -- and perhaps they are all here "for such a time as this."