This month’s gathering of 3 Texas authors features a look at World War II through the letters of a pilot to his sweetheart back home, a historical novel set in the aftermath of Galveston’s 1900 storm, and a military thriller set on the U.S. bases of Korea many years after the war there.

Author Meet & Greet
Saturday, June 22nd, 2013
2:00-4:00 pm

Wings and a Ring
Letters of War and Love from a WWII Pilot
by René Palmer Armstrong

“Her preservation and contextualization of J.R. Jones’s letters intimately reveal the mind of a young citizen-soldier who was far from home and those he loved.”

When René Armstrong’s husband found a box of 295 letters in a Texas City junk store, he had no idea of the profound piece of history in his possession. Thus began the author’s journey to discover the story of these two young people who met on a blind date, fell in love, and soon were separated by the demands of war. Fifty-eight years later, the wartime romance of James Richard Jones and Helen Elnora Bartlett comes to us through Armstrong’s carefully researched and illustrated book. Enhanced with official, now declassified, government documents, the love story of J.R. and Elnora unfolds as he writes to the love of his life from the jungles of New Guinea. Held together by Wings and a Ring, their promise of tomorrow would have to survive a year of war.

“Many Americans misunderstand the young men who fought in WWII. Contrary to popular myth, these men were not fighting machines. They were young, scared, and, in the end, incredibly mortal figures whose humanity proved the defining characteristic of their greatness. René Armstrong’s book displays this humanity in full force. Her preservation and contextualization of J.R. Jones’s letters intimately reveal the mind of a young citizen-soldier who was far from home and those he loved. Her contribution to the historical record is one that will be valued for generations.”—Lawrence J. Hickey.


The Storm After: A Novel
by Gina Hooten Popp

“They have only this one thing in common: they lived another day, while thousands around them did not.”

Set on Galveston Island, this tale chronicles the lives of four survivors of the Great Hurricane of 1900: John, a hard-drinking, hard-working dockworker; Sarah Michelle, a happily married wife and mother; Dean, a daring gambler not afraid to use his Southern charm; and Sean, a young boy with a secret. They have only this one thing in common: they lived another day, while thousands around them did not. Thrust together after the storm, they attempt to deal with the aftermath of what life has dealt them. And they find, as with most catastrophic events, the real storm begins after the demon wind and driving rain die down.

This is the first novel of Native Texan Gina Hooten Popp. It is a compelling historical fiction of four strangers who come together in the aftermath of the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900—the deadliest hurricane in US history. More than 6,000 people died that fateful day and the island was left a sea of brokenness. As the four diverse strangers cling to each other amidst the devastation in an attempt to survive, they change each other in ways they never would have imagined. It’s a gripping tale that is more than a story about a tragic storm, it’s about human spirit triumphing over unimaginable adversity.


Land of the Morning Calm
by K. W. Varner

The underlying theme of the book is a situation brought about when the most famous General in the world, General of the Armies Douglas MacArther, having destroyed the army of North Korea, is faced with the massive incursion of a Chinese “volunteer army.” He proposes, in true MacArthur fashion, to destroy that army using nuclear weapons. Harry Truman, recognizing the likely result of these actions being a major Asian war, fires him when he insists on being allowed to pursue his plans. The ignominious dismissal of the man generates a fury within his staff that lingers for over twenty years and results, as members of the staff reach positions of influence in the U.S. Government, in a plot with members of the South Korean government to reignite the conflict in order to reunite the peninsula.

An intelligence agency of the government enlists two people to prevent this. Jeptha Wisdom Douglas, a veteran of the original U.S. Army Delta Force, and Katherine O’Hanrahan Marrs, a martial arts and personal weapons expert. As the narrative opens, Douglas is a Department of the Army Civilian working in an ammunition supply point in Ouijombu Korea, and Marrs is a supply liaison officer in the headquarters of the U.S. Army’s First Combined Corps. Both are emotionally damaged by past events, and must unite to prevent another war.

Note: the phrase “Land of the Morning Calm” is an English language title for South Korea loosely derived from the hanja characters for Joseon, the name of the ruling dynasty from the Twelfth to the Nineteenth Centuries.

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