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A 5 question interview with Jack Woodville London

What prompted you to begin a trilogy set in a small town during WWII?

It is always said that men who fought in WWII never talk about their experiences; it certainly seemed to me that we didn’t hear a lot from the women who were caught up in that whirlwind either. Now, just as we are losing both the men and the women of that era at a rate faster than the war killed them, it is important that we not forget them. They endured rationing, separation, and wildly off-base expectations, such as winning the war and remaining chaste. Do we really know who our parents cared about before they married each other, what became of them, and, in the end, how we came to be who we are?

As for the small town, the icon of the home-front is Rosie the Riveter; the fact is that the US was still very rural and, except for those in the military or those who moved to work in the war factories, most Americans still had not traveled more than 50 miles from home. Very few rural Americans became Rosie the Riveter.

Your novel, French Letters -- Virginia’s War: Tierra Texas 1944, is set
Stateside during the war. How did you research WWII Texas?

There is a tremendous amount of pure information about the Office of Price Administration (rationing), aircraft factories, military air fields, crops, census, that sort of thing in the source records. The color of ration stamps for what foods or goods, wooden sidewalks, what was on the grocery store shelves and what kind of medical treatment an old-school doctor could provide in the 1940’s, the text of the announcement broadcast in the middle of the night about the invasion of France – that kind of information is out there.

But the people – that required hard work, to get the sense of how they spoke to and about one another, slang, their daily lives – that took work. I spoke with dozens of people who grew up in that era and in small towns, looked at photographs and read snippets of their letters and four-page newspapers.

How much of the novel is based on fact and how much on fiction?

Tierra is fictitious. Virginia, Will, Poppy, all of the people are fictitious. Their stories in the novel are fictitious. But, the background to their lives and their town graded out with early readers as close to one hundred per cent factual. If in the novel a certain color ration stamp was sought for a certain food at a certain date, it is correct. Passing references to events such as freakish rainstorms, the kind of planes that flew from air bases in Lubbock and Clovis, where B-25 bombers were manufactured, how one might covet Lucky Strikes or a pair of shoes, those bits are on the money.

Tell us something surprising about the American young women that our soliders left behind during WWII?

One of the most disgraceful things a girl could do in a small town, worse even than rumored un-chastity, was to send a Dear John letter.
It was expected that all girls were good girls who would wait for the soldiers they sent off to war. The fact is before they were our mothers and grandmothers, they were us. They had the same passions, inexperience, uncertainty, and naughtiness that we had when we were teens and twenties. They did not have the freedom we had – unequal pay, peremptory dismissal to give a man the same job, an expectation that a man was the head of the family and not to be challenged, and a very unequal set of rules for intimacy. There were no birth control pills and it was hard to argue that contraceptives were for anything other than sin. Even so, the soldiers who sowed a statistically staggering amount of wild oats, particularly in England, during WWII, came home to discover that some of their pastures had been plowed in their absence.

What are you working on next?

Virginia’s War is the novel of a young woman who was expected to wait for her soldier, Will, who was sent off as an army doctor to the war in Europe. I am working on the sequel, the novel of that army doctor, in France. The stories mirror one another.

An Interview with Yvonne Perry
Writers in the Sky

Today we welcome Jack Woodville London to our writing blog. He is discussing the first book in his trilogy, French Letters -- Virginia’s War: Tierra Texas 1944.

YVONNE: Tell me something about yourself and your writing background.

Jack London:I began writing and editing articles for the International Law Journal in 1970 and over the next thirty-five years wrote a large number of articles on evidence, aviation law, and procedure. I also wrote rules of evidence and uniform jury instructions for the bar. About ten years ago, I began writing short stories for family and friends.

I come from a literary family. My mother wrote a play in her sixties. My aunt was president of Pen Women. And then there was that guy in California who wrote about Alaska, the gold rush, dog stories. He died almost 100 years ago.

YVONNE: What is the title of your book? Give us the basic story line so we’ll know what it’s about.

Jack London:French Letters: Virginia’s War is the story of Virginia Sullivan, a lonely young woman in a small town in 1944 who had to decide whether to tell her soldier she would wait for him, then discovered a bit long after he was gone that she is pregnant. Her father runs the town. He and the town are happily oblivious to her dilemma, living the war in tarnished patriotism by counterfeiting ration coupons, hiding things from the government war production buyers, and gossiping about one another.

YVONNE: What inspired you to write this book?

Jack London: I am a historian by training and am fascinated by the part of war that falls on the public, all apart from the dates of battles and names of generals. Go to any military base today and you’ll see widows, moms waiting for their men to come back from Iraq or Afghanistan, and children who never knew their dads. World War II is a story of V-mails, the form of letters used to correspond between home and the war front, and Dear John letters, the form used to stick a dagger in some poor soldier’s heart. A lot of V-mails with Dear John letters in them sank in the naval battle and more than one unknowing soldier came home in 1945 to find babies that weren’t there when he left. The role of doctors completely changed in World War II; penicillin, sulfa, and boiled water changed infant mortality rates all over the world. The second book of the series is about Virginia’s absent soldier, a doctor sent to France, who comes home to find a child who wasn’t there when he left for the war. And I love double entendres and word-play. How many people know the old-time meaning of ‘French letters?’

YVONNE: Is this the first book you have written?

Jack London: It is the first published. Before this, I wrote a 400,000 word courtroom novel.

YVONNE: How long did it take to write this book? Any interesting tidbits about your writing method or how the book developed?

Jack London: I wrote five drafts of Virginia’s War over a two year period, then stopped to do a first rough draft of Will’s Peace (tentative title of the second novel). It was essential that the two stories mesh. Virginia’s War and Will’s Peace take place at the same time, 1944-1945, with letters and events shared by a couple who are from a small Texas town. The events, dates, unit numbers, people mentioned in letters--all those had to agree without giving away either story. Once I finished the rough of Will’s Peace I was able to go back to Virginia’s War and finish it in only two more drafts, hundreds of revisions, and one more year--no time at all, really (smiling).

YVONNE: How did you publish your book? Tell me about your publishing experience and what you learned from it.

Jack London: Pathway published a book titled Every Town Needs a Trail and I am in the book. Mike Kearby, an author of historic fiction of the American West, encouraged me to seek a small independent publisher with a first rate team. Pathway created the Vire Press division to give me a chance. Mike directed Vire to Mindy Reed and Stephanie Barko and they shepherded Vire, me, and Pathway to the conclusion. I have learned that they are the publishers and I am the writer.

YVONNE: Where is your book available? Do you have a Web site or blog where we can learn more about you or your book?

Jack London:
It is available through the Vire Press website, HYPERLINK "www.virepress.com%20" www.virepress.com and is distributed by Pathway Books which has it listed with the major distribution catalogs. It is now available on Amazon. And I do have a blog, HYPERLINK "www.frenchlettersthenovel.blogspot.com" www.frenchlettersthenovel.blogspot.com. I invite your readers to visit and comment about the books and about the World War II experiences of their family and friends.

YVONNE: As far as marketing, do you do more online publicity or print/radio/TV promotion? Tell me some ways you have promoted your book. Give examples and links to any sites you feel might help other authors.

Jack London: I write and when my publicist, Stephanie Barko, arranges or coordinates something, I do what she tells me. As far as promotion, the book launch is at BookPeople in Austin, Texas on February 13 (make someone happy for Valentine’s Day with French Letters). One of my editor Mindy Reed’s brilliant pieces of advice was to have early readers fill out a blinded questionnaire so that they could give feedback on the book. Those early readers were wildly enthusiastic, not only about the story but also the historical accuracy, such as the correct color of ration stamps and the military draft notices posted on post office bulletin boards. Those early readers and blurb writers have publicized the book by word of mouth. Oh, and the Groom News, my hometown paper, circulation 250 (smiling again).

YVONNE: Have you hired a publicist to help promote this book? If so, what was your experience like?

Jack London: Stephanie Barko has done a great job. She lined up some perfect candidates for blurbs and, as a result, the book has jacket endorsement blurbs from Jim Parkel, past president of AARP, from Canadian Playwright Leeann Minogue, from Mike Kearby, from two retired history professors, and from four elected officials. She has arranged interviews and book reviews and has a very good relationship with papers, print, and broadcast media. She has a great talent for identifying the readers who would be interested in French Letters and the right publications to query for reviews.

YVONNE: Any other comment you would like to share?

Jack London:As we age, we think we are becoming our parents. French Letters reminds us that before our parents became our parents, they were us--young, uncertain, a bit out of control, and trying to get by in a difficult world. No one who has read the book thinks Virginia Sullivan was their mother, but they do think the book describes someone their mother told them about (and someone their father said he wanted to tell them about, but didn’t).

 

YVONNE: Thank you for giving us the opportunity to get to know you and learn about your book. I wish you well in your journey as an author.

Thank you for the visit, Yvonne.
- Jack

This is excerpt one from the Book People book signing of Virginia's War

This is excerpt two from the Book People book signing of Virginia's War

Check out this interview with Paul Carrozza, owner of RunTex on News 8 Austin.

 

 

Military Writers Society of America Interview with Jack Woodville London MONDAY, MARCH 30, 2009

An Interview with Writer Jack Woodville London
Jack Woodville London burst on the writing scene February 2009 with the first book in a trilogy – French Letters: Virginia’s War (http://www.amazon.com/French-Letters-Book-One-Virginias/dp/0981597505). Using vivid word pictures, he shows how war affects a small Texas town during World War II.

Military Writers Society of America recently conducted this e-mail interview with him as he heads out to speak about and sign his book..

1. Tell us about you. What makes you tick? Conflict. I am astounded that people spend much of adulthood acting in ways that a paper boy or Girl Scout knows not to do. All of us know someone who made up stories to cover something up, figuring that they could sort it out later. Virginia Sullivan wakes one morning to find that her father has told her town and friends that she eloped, which was not true, in order for him to save face in front of the town over her pregnancy, which she should have known could be a problem, given that Will, the young man to whom her father journalistically married her, was a soldier in Europe at the time and knew nothing about it. Virginia was all set to have a clash with her father over the pregnancy, the false elopement, and Will, until later the same day she ran into Shirley, her long time rival for Will’s affection. Then, at least for a while, she enjoyed letting the lie be the truth, just to poke a stick at Shirley. Conflict.

2. Where do you get your ideas? Little known facts that I run across. For example, it is well documented that the out-of-marriage birth rate in England went through the roof when American soldiers were there between 1942 and 1945, a phenomenon known as ‘over-paid, over-sexed, and over here.’ A statistic almost no one knows is that out-of-marraige birth rates in the US went up too, to 7.3 births per thousand in white women under the age of 25 before 1946. A lot of mail went down in the North Atlantic on US ships during that time. We know that some of the letters mailed to soldiers were Dear John letters. What do you get when you combine Dear John letters that the soldier doesn’t receive because of a torpedo to the mail boat and 7.3 out-of-marriage births per thousand to the girls back home? Some soldiers got a shocking surprise when the war was over. Conflict.Another little known fact is that after the initial panic over food rationing, most Americans gained weight because the eventual allowance for meat was more than Americans had been getting before the war. Then there was a black market in rationed goods, such as tires and gasoline....

3. I’ve read that you create maps of your scenes. What made you decide to do that and how do you do it? I learned mapping and orienteering in the Army, and later as a pilot. It is very helpful to me to create and inhabit a place and let the reader live there for a while. I usually map-sketch the streets and businesses, such as Poppy’s newspaper and the town square, Doc’s clinic and Bart’s post office, the road out to the cemetery and the quarry. When I do, events that happen there always happen in the same place and people go to them or leave them or refer to them the same way. In the sequel, many of the things that happen to Will in France are in a town where his field surgery is dug in for a week. He spends much of it in a Calvados barn near a wash house on the river, and across from a gothic monastery that was abandoned after the Germans took away some of the monks for labor.

4. What first fascinated you with writing? Mind travel. I remember very clearly reading about the Italian Mille Miglia, the one thousand mile auto race through Italy for sports cars, and from the words on the page I could see red Ferraris, green Jaguars, Porsches and Alfa Romeos, all downshifting on hard corners in Tuscan villages. I was ten years old. I had a wonderful high school teacher who led me through literature that most students didn’t read. As for the writing of it, my seismometer moved when I read ‘The Eve of St. Agnes,’ then read a marked up draft in which Keats had struggled with word choices about the sound that a woman’s night clothes make on their way to the floor. I hadn’t gathered until then that writing was work, and it was rewarding to discover the many ways one could express a single idea. Then I discovered ‘Men at Arms’ by Evelyn Waugh, and I was hooked.

5. How did you conduct your research when you were writing French Letters, Book One? Source documents where possible. I looked at original ration cards, cotton gin engine specs, the shift mechanism of the 1937 Ford, brands of beer sold in Clovis, New Mexico in 1944, who trained to fly what kind of aircraft in Lubbock and Clovis and which airplanes were manufactured in Fort Worth. I tried to know what people living in a Tierra, Texas would know.

6. Who are your favorite contemporary writers and why? Donna Tartt has more skill to put you in a story than anyone I can think of. I am taken with every sentence she writes. Alain de Botton writes prose that makes me believe he was sitting behind me as I went through my day, then cracks me up. He wrote one chapter in which he meets a girl on an airplane, then falls in love with her, asking ‘what are the odds?’ He then replicates the seat layout of a Boeing 737, multiplies the number of seats by the number of passengers and applies the formula to determine what the odds were. Simon Schama writes about many of those little facts that are hidden between the big facts. Michael Chabon has the ability to make complicated stories appear disarmingly simple.

7. What made you choose this particular topic? My wife and I were in Belgium reading the morning paper. I learned that a farmer was tending to his barn one morning when a cow exploded in his pasture. The cow had stepped on an unexploded shell from World War I. I believe we are all still walking on, and occasionally being exploded by, shells from World War II. Sometimes those shells are in the form of people who were born to parents we don’t know as well as we think we do, and for reasons we would never dream of (talk about a baby boom...). Much is made of what our fathers and grandfathers did in the war. No one seems to have asked our mothers and grandmothers what they did while they waited or even if they waited.

8. Did you model Tierra, Texas after a particular place? If so, where? I grew up in a small town in the Texas Panhandle but went on to do military service in small towns in Kansas, Kentucky, and Virginia. As a lawyer I have worked in hundreds of small towns all over the United States. I have learned that people are much the same everywhere. Each town has its gossips, its bankers, a lawman with a second set of rules, someone with his thumb on the town’s scales, somebody with a perpetual belief that a bigger town has a lot more to offer but no one would want to live there, and a lot of very nice people who get caught up in their whirlwinds and conflicts.9. This is the first in a trilogy. Tell us about the next two books in the series and when they will be released. I have alluded to Will. The second book is what happens in his life during his military service as a field surgeon in France at the exact same time as the events in Virginia’s War are unfolding in a small town in Texas. The publisher says sales have to drive publishing but, subject to that Draconian caveat, the editor and I hope to have Will (tentative title) in your hands before the summer of 2010. It is well along now.Book Three is "Children of the Good War." The prologue to Book One sets the stage for that novel about Virginia’s and Will’s children, if they are Virginia’s and Will’s children.

10. Where will you be speaking next and signing your book? Maple Street Book Store, New Orleans, on April 1.Lakeway, Texas Activity Center May 13Steve’s Sundries in Tulsa the morning of June 6, D-DayFull Circle Books in Oklahoma City the afternoon of June 6Still pending in November are Silent Wings Museum, Lubbock, on Veteran’s Day andPanhandle Professional Writers in Amarillo on November 26.
To see if I'm coming to your town, please view my complete tour schedule at http://www.booktour.com/.
I also invite your readers to blog with me from the link on my website, http://www.virepress.com/.

If you are in the vicinity of any of these places, go by and meet the author.
POSTED BY MPL CREATIVE RESOURCES AT 5:12 PM

Jack Hits number one!press for vire press french letters bookBookPleasures 02/16/09

This engaging trilogy, French Letters, opens with a scene from a small Texas town, affected like most of the country, by World War II. Populated by characters both engaging and exasperating, the action is never dull. From a bump on the nose to a baby bump, the activities in one small town easily fill the first book in the series, Virginia’s War: Tierra, Texas, 1944. And by the end of the first book, readers will be wishing that they already had the next volume in hand.

The main circumstances of this story focus on Sandy Clayton, a small boy whose energy and interests always seem to keep him front and center of Tierra’s happenings, and Virginia Sullivan, a young woman whose recent pregnancy is less surprising to her than the activities of her own family. Whether it’s her newspaper-owning father announcing an elopement that never occurred or her brother Bart posting her personal letters on the bulletin board of the Post Office, something unexpected is always at hand.

Then there’s the back story of Virginia’s friends, the boys who went off to fight the war: Will Hastings (of the reported marriage), his brother Peter, Hoyt Carter, and Johnny Bradley, not all of whom will make it through. Whether set on the home front of Tierra, Texas, or on the fields of France or the islands of the Pacific, there is grief to be suffered, but also strength and companionship among these friends from Texas.

Author Jack London has given his readers a great opening salvo in Virginia’s War, something to sink their teeth into--a town worth exploring, interesting and complicated relationships, power struggles, and overshadowing it all, a World War. If London can keep up the pace of Virginia’s War into volume two, he will surely have a winning trilogy on his hands.
Carey Anderson's review for Blogcritics & Library Thing
___________________

Carey A
Blog Critics.org, Published: Feb 07, 2009

By 1944 the small town of Tierra, Texas was used to the war. The young boys played war games, arguing over who would be on the side of the Allies and who would be the Nazis for the day. The nearby air base added some excitement with their frequent air training exercises. And above all, Tierra, like every small town around the world -- and as depicted in Jack Woodville London's absorbing Virginia's War — gossiped.

In early 1944 the gossip was all about Virginia Sullivan. In the seven years that she has been the sweetheart of Will Hastings, she has never made him any promises. Not to marry him, not even to wait for him while he was off at medical school. Now Will is a doctor, overseas with the Army, and Virginia is home in Tierra. And pregnant.

Now, Virginia's dad just happens to run the town newspaper. Poppy Sullivan is a big man in town and he usually gets what he wants. He was able to fix his son Bart's medical records so that he was exempt from service. Then he managed to set Bart up in the cushy job of United States Postmaster. When he finds out Virginia is expecting, he solves the problem his own way and never stops to consult his daughter. The very next day he announces in the paper that the couple had eloped the previous Thanksgiving, when Will was home on leave.

Poor Virginia. Now she is trapped in her father's lie that she is a married woman. Her nasty brother, Bart, is hiding all of her mail from Will and she is becoming frantic as the months go by and she hears nothing from him. She doesn't know where he is and she watches the casualty lists carefully for any mention of his name.Meanwhile, something else in Tierra is unravelling. Some folks in town have been doing rather well for themselves and don't seem to be suffering under the rationing program, as most of their neighbors are. When Government cars start to turn up in town it sure stirs up the talk. Changes are on the way in Tierra, many people will be affected and the town will have something to talk about for years to come.

I really enjoyed this novel about the homefront during World War II and the dynamics of a small town. There are many well-developed characters that together form the social and political nucleus of this community and I was fascinated with the way the author wove their stories together. Tierra felt like a real place to me and I was captivated with the lives of its inhabitants. I will be eagerly awaiting the second installment in this interesting trilogy.

The website for Virginia's War is: www.virepress.com/ and it will be published on February 13, 2009 by Vire Press, ISBN 978-0-9815975-0-8.

_____________________

thetometraveller | Feb 7, 2009 |

By 1944 the small town of Tierra, Texas was used to the war. The young boys played war games, arguing over who would be on the side of the Allies and who would be the Nazis for the day. The nearby air base added some excitement with their frequent air training exercises. And above all, Tierra, like every small town around the world, gossiped.

In early 1944 the gossip was all about Virginia Sullivan. In the seven years that she has been the sweetheart of Will Hastings, she has never made him any promises. Not to marry him, not even to wait for him while he was off at medical school. Now Will is a doctor, overseas with the Army, and Virginia is home in Tierra. And pregnant.

Now, Virginia's Dad just happens to run the town newspaper. Poppy Sullivan is a big man in town and he usually gets what he wants. He was able to fix his son Bart's medical records so that he was exempt from service. Then he managed to set Bart up in the cushy job of United States Postmaster. When he finds out Virginia is expecting, he solves the problem his own way and never stops to consult his daughter. The very next day he announces in the paper that the couple had eloped the previous Thanksgiving, when Will was home on leave.

Poor Virginia. Now she is trapped in her father's lie that she is a married woman. Her nasty brother, Bart, is hiding all of her mail from Will and she is becoming frantic as the months go by and she hears nothing from him. She doesn't know where he is and she watches the casualty lists carefully for any mention of his name.

Meanwhile, something else in Tierra is unravelling. Some folks in town have been doing rather well for themselves and don't seem to be suffering under the rationing program, as most of their neighbors are. When Government cars start to turn up in town it sure stirs up the talk. Changes are on the way in Tierra, many people will be affected and the town will have something to talk about for years to come.

I really enjoyed this novel about the homefront during World War II and the dynamics of a small town. There are many well-developed characters that together form the social and political nucleus of this community and I was fascinated with the way the author wove their stories together. Tierra felt like a real place to me and I was absorbed with the lives of its inhabitants. I will be eagerly awaiting the second installment in this interesting trilogy.

_______________

Jani Brooks
Romance Reviews Today

VIRGINIA’S WAR: TIERRA, TEXAS 1944 -- Jack Woodville London
French Letters Trilogy – Book One
Vire Press
ISBN: 978-0-9815975-0-8
February 2009
Historical Fiction

Tierra, Texas – 1944

Tierra is a typical small Texas town where everyone knows everyone else, and little goes unnoticed. This is where Virginia Sullivan grew up, the daughter of Tierra’s newspaper editor, who also happens to be the man everyone defers to. His controlling demeanor leads to Virginia reading in the newspaper that she and Will Hastings eloped on the eve of his deployment. Of course, the fact that she’s pregnant, which isn’t a surprise to her, explains her father’s decision to erase any rumors of who the father is. Virginia stays mum on the entire topic, but her brother, Bart, the town’s postmaster, is not going to make it easy on her. Poppy, their father, “arranged” for Bart to take over the post office, not to mention getting his various medical “issues” documented by the town doctor in order to obtain a military deferment. And Bart, never much of a brother, has plastered Will’s letters to Virginia on the post office bulletin board for all to see.

Living in a fishbowl is bad enough, but to have your own brother plotting against you, your former best friend, who has a not-so-secret yearning for Will, gossiping about you, and being pregnant leaves Virginia unable to plan for the future. With her mother in a mental hospital, Will’s brother, Peter, also off to war, Virginia must handle her dilemma alone. Except for a young neighbor boy, Sandy, Virginia more or less avoids dealing with the rest of the town if she can help it. It’s a lonely existence, and, except for the first few letters that Bart shared with the town, she’s received no more mail from Will.

VIRGINIA’S WAR: TIERRA, TEXAS 1944 is the first book in the French Letters Trilogy. It tells the story of a rather dysfunctional family in an equally dysfunctional town, and how both are handling the uncertain times they’re living in. With the town sheriff and postmaster under his control, Poppy doles out his largess to certain citizens while maintaining his own little secrets. Virginia isn’t sure about her feelings for the absent “husband” she hasn’t heard from. Bart, a man with few scruples, uses his father’s name and authority to run rampant in town and across the border. All of this is observed by young Sandy, who seems to be the only one with a clear, if naïve, vision of the town.

The prologue of VIRGINIA’S WAR grabbed my attention, and once the story is laid out for readers, it’s difficult not to read to the end! Everything comes to a head in an exciting, and somewhat surprising, conclusion. I’m looking forward to the continuation of the French Letters Trilogy. This is Mr. London’s debut novel, and it’s an excellent beginning!

____________________

Reviewed by Mairead Walpole Crystal Reviews | www.crystalreviews.com

Title: French Letters, Book One: Virginia’s War: Tierra, Texas 1944
Author: Jack Woodville London
ISBN: 978-0-9815975-0-8
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: VirePress (www.virepress.com <http://www.virepress.com/> )
Softcover, 224 pages
Available 2/1/09
 
 
This novel, set against the backdrop of WWII, takes one into the life of a small Texas town where a young woman’s choice changes the lives of those around her. Told from different viewpoints, the reader becomes instantly engaged with Virginia and the various “wars” she is waging on the home-front: with her vengeful brother, with her father’s manipulations of the town and its inhabitants, and with the truth, of her life, her marriage and her pregnancy.
 
Jack Woodville London’s touching novel of small-town secrets, love, and the casualties of war is not what I had expected. On first glance, it appeared to be nice story, suitable entertainment for whiling away a rainy afternoon with a pot of tea. In reality, this piece is falls into what I would term literature rather than a piece of mind-candy. This is the sort of novel one does not come across very often. Mr. London’s prose is beautiful without being pretentious. His characters come alive with a minimum of description and he handles their strengths and weaknesses in a manner that one can relate to. Further, Mr. London delivers a poignant, compelling story without gratuitous sex or violence.
 
This book is the first in a trilogy and I am eagerly awaiting the next installment.

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Check out these blog links for more reviews of French Letters:

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2009/02/07/031715.php
 
http://www.librarything.com/work/7483466/reviews/40298919

http://thetometraveller.blogspot.com/2009/02/review-virginias-war-tierra-texas-1944.html

http://mwsamembertalk.blogspot.com/2009/03/interview-with-writer-jack-woodvilld.html