Inspirational

Title: Carolina Roots - From Whence I Came
Author: Thomas Shytle
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Inspirational
Reviewer: Lee Boyland

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1419695193

The author was a product of a hard hit area during the depression years. He was barely a year old and the great depression was at its peak when his family moved from the cotton mill village where he was born to relocate near Bryson City in the heart of the Western North Carolina mountains. The economy there was worse than it had been on the mill village; and after struggling to survive on a dollar a day his Father made working for FDR's Works Project Administration (WPA), his family held on for six years living in the most poverty stricken area of the country. He was seven when they moved back to the same cotton mill village and to much better conditions than when they left, thanks to the most part for Hitler's war that was raging in Europe. His story is about his experiences while growing up near Kings Mountain, NC followed by twenty-five years in the USAF. The years spent in the military are related in detail from the viewpoint of an Air Force non-com; from the Korean War to an assignment to a covert unit whose cold war mission was to "Develop an unconventional warfare capability that included inserting, supplying, and extracting indigenous partisans, to provide them with refitted small arms, and to design, produce, and airdrop psychological warfare materials into Eastern European countries, and to support U-2 over-flights of Eastern Europe and Russia." Throughout the book you will feel his reverence for his convictions, his devotion to family and an unquestionable commitment to duty, honor, and country.

Title: Heaven in the Midst of Hell: A Quaker Chaplain's View of the War in Iraq
Author: Sheri Snively
Genre: Non-Fiction, Inspirational
Reviewer: Pat McGrath Avery

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0981992609

War exposes the divide between who we think we are and how we behave in extreme situations. Commander Snively has crafted a vivid, unsettling, and ultimately hopeful personal account of the effects of the Iraq war on soldiers and civilians alike who find themselves astride that dilemma.

From her unique perspective as a Navy Quaker chaplain serving with Marines working amid the boredom, tension, and seemingly meaningless carnage at a trauma hospital and morgue between Ramadi and Fallujah, Commander Snively negotiates a compassionate path to healing marked not by formulaic answers, but by an open and questioning spirit.

Lavishly adorned with the author's own evocative photographs, Heaven in the Midst of Hell is a compelling and unforgettable journey into the human soul