While Lynda's book is a hauntingly graphic record of the triumphs and tragedies that the ANC nurses and Army surgeons experienced in Nam, A Piece Of My Heart gives the reader a very broad perspective of the contributions of women in many other areas.

The foreword to the book was written by the wonderful Martha Raye, whose unflinching commitment to the men and women who served in Nam led to her being a two-time Purple Heart recipient. That even an entertainer could be wounded twice in the line of duty speaks volumes about the risk level In Country.

Equally, Civilian Flight Attendant Micki Voisard almost met her end when her airliner almost collided with a B-52 that was maintaining radio silence during an airstrike.

Yet even though the Red Cross Donut Dollies, such as Penni Evans and "Sam" Bokina Christie and WACs such as Doris Allen all have compelling stories to relate, it is the experiences of the nurses that really stay with you, long after you have put the book down.

For most of her post-Nam life, former ANC nurse and author Lynda Van Devanter (Home Before Morning - available through Amazon.com) was haunted by the memory of a young soldier who had no face, and who eventually had to be left to die because of the extent of his injuries.

When you read the piece by Anne Simon Auger (91st Evac. - Chu Lai) you realize that injuries of that magnitude were not as uncommon as you might hope and pray. Anne also described a young soldier whose face had been shot away, leaving him blind and in her words, "a vegetable".

While my own view is that people in such terrible physical condition should be given enough morphine to shut down their breathing, or in the absence of that, on the battlefield, a mercy round from an M-16, I fully accept that however you have to deal with such shocking injuries, it will stay with you for the rest of your life.

Let us not forget that while the cowardly Stalinist flag burners were calling the returning troops "baby killers", thousands of true blue American women were risking their own lives to support the largely teenaged US soldiers in a war that increasingly made no sense to the people who were being asked to fight it.

These women were Vets. These women were heroes. These women were angels.

We must constantly seek ways to honour them. Their sacrifice must never be forgotten.

A great story, and very interesting to read! I have never watched the movie, but I want to watch it now. There is a set of pictures from the movie(I think) around the middle of the book and I thought it was quite interesting to look at them. If you like animal-whale stories, I'm sure you'd like this book. Even if you don't like animal-whale stories, I think you would like it anyway! My opinion is that this book was very interesting!

It's way too long - 756 pages of text. The author, Keith Walker, seems intent on sparing no detail, however insignificant, of Burton Abbott's trial in Alameda County for the 1955 slaying of Stephanie Bryant, whose corpse was found in an unmarked grave in Trinity County, and of the details surrounding the murder itself. Some of the more important details of the case get lost in the mish-mosh that Walker concocts, and I lost track of many of the names, dates, and places long before I finished the book.

756 pages is a more appropriate length for an encyclopedia, instead of a true-life tale of forensics/ courtroom drama. But Walker provides us with virtually no sources for any of the facts that he sets forth, and if he had, this presumably would have stretched the book out interminably further.

Without sources, we're forced to take the author's story at face value, and this is impossible in every instance because the author often "cheats" and sets forward as fact that which is clearly unknowable. The most glaring example of this is that he often does take us into the mind of the accused, Burton Abbott. The mind is that of an innocent man who is truly startled at all of the developments in the case against him, and because we see this early on in the book, a tone is set from there. Yet one need not bemoan the absence of a bibliography or source index to KNOW that the author could not possibly know what was in the mind of the accused.

The absence of source materials and the "mind-reading" device could only be acceptable if the author had intended to write a work of fiction based on the true facts of the Abbott/Bryant matter, but, as reflected in the Library of Congress/ISBN catalog reference, he appears to be passing this off as a "true crime" non-fiction book.

The book also dwells overly loud and long on the travails of Elsie Abbott, the aggrieved mother of the wrongly-accused. The slow tortuous route that she travels while awaiting her son's vindication is obviously part of this story, but to behold it as frequently as Walker imposes it on us is just too painful. Also, there is an air of unrealism about the way in which Elsie repeatedly shifts back and forth from maudlin grieving mother to whip-sharp Sherlockian detective with her own encyclopedic knowledge of the facts surrounding the case, and I suspect that Walker is using Elsie as a mouthpiece with which to describe his own impressions.

This raises the question of what exactly Walker's motivations are. I do not recognize Golden Door Press, the publisher, or any of Walker's other works described in the beginning, but I suspect that Walker's intention, at least in part, was to write an anti-death penalty book. There is an allusion to the anti-death penalty movement that was in existence in California in the 1950's. And while none of the "bleeding heart" arguments against the death penalty have ever convinced me, this book does highlight the only sensible argument against capital punishment that has ever been raised: the horrible possibility that it will cause a fatal and irreversible miscarriage of justice.

This book has caused me to revise my impression of another book on the same subject: "Shallow Grave in Trinity County" by Harry Farrell, which reads like a brief for the prosecution and made me wonder exactly why the jury deliberated for as long as it did. For all of its flaws, "A Trail of Corn" raises issues that remain inexplicably ignored or insufficiently addressed by "Shallow Grave", which was published later. These include the issue of whether Burton Abbott's slight build and sickly physical condition would have enabled him to overpower a resisting victim and ascend a steep hillside. Unless Stephanie was "walked" up the hillside while still alive, her murderer would have had to either carry or drag her corpse up the slope as well.

Some intriguing physical evidence that Stephanie was actually buried in Marin County before being unearthed and re-buried in Trinity (a notion pooh-poohed by Farrell and incompatible with the timetable justifying Burton's guilt) is alluded to in this book. The notion that the criminal justice system is often "rigged" to favor the prosecution, that prosecutors themselves distort or disdain exculpatory evidence in order to score a "win" (and the political plums that accompany that win), and that judges hold prosecutors and defense attorneys to dual standards of conduct is less incredible to this reviewer, in his new capacity of public defender, than it once might have been.

Notwithstanding the book's length, the ending does somewhat repay reading. Elsie's (Walker's?) revelation of the candidate for alternative murder suspect is as plausible and startling in its denouement as the end of Perry Mason rerun.

Do the state of California and the county of Alameda have innocent blood on their hands? Hey, Abbott!

This book, was not only interesting but also puts you into a better perspecive to look at modern culture. How the world's beliefs and feelings have changes drastically. The main point of this story is about a heavy metal band Slipknot, and angered heavy metal band highly popular by rock/heavy metal fans, as they are considered as Maggots. As a huge fan of them I believe, I may have a different opinion than someone oblivious of the band. Overall I think this book is worth its money. So, if you are ready to take on a farely challenging book and enjoy criticing the modern art of music and culture this is the book for you.