With General Sherman’s Union forces closing on Atlanta, 19-year-old Ulysses Simpson and his father, Bayliss, on leave from their Confederate units, set out to avenge the death of a younger member of their family slain by a band of deserters, an action that sets the Simpson clan on a course that will have a significant impact on future generations.
A hundred years later, Ron Simpson, having enlisted in the army during the Vietnam War, and trained as a helicopter pilot, traumatized by news of the massacre by US forces at My Lai, is faced with a decision—does he honor his oath to serve his country, no matter what, or does he follow his own conscience, and his desire not to kill.
Sons of My Fathers by Michael A. Simpson is a mostly true, multi-generation, family saga that explores the stress that can be put on a family when personal values conflict with the expectations of society or the organization to which a person belongs. Using the backdrop of the Civil War, a conflict that pitted brother against brother, and threatened to fracture the nation, the author contrasts that period with the Vietnam War at the height of the anti-war movement, when citizens began to question the wisdom and integrity of those elected to lead the nation. Using historical sources and family recollections, Simpson takes the reader inside the internal conflicts that rage when the decisions and orders from those in leadership veer from the personal moral codes of individuals, and show the need of individuals to take personal responsibility for their decisions and actions.
In today’s climate of moral ambiguity and political uncertainty, this book is food for thought. In addition, it’s a highly compelling read that shows the personal anguish of war and its impact on those called upon to fight; providing lessons that can help navigate the treacherous waters that we face, not just in war, but in every facet of life.
I received a free copy of this book, and found that, once I started reading, I was unable to put it down. This is not just a war story, nor is it your typical coming-of-age novel. It’s a blueprint for living a life that has meaning, and being able to respect the one person who really matters in life—yourself.
A Discovered Diamond
Sons of My Fathers by Michael A. Simpson is based on the author’s own family history and reads almost like a biography. However, I assume that attributes to its characters’ are as the author imagines them and, hence, are fictional in detail; but what great writing bringing this saga alive for the reader.The cover of a denuded tree strangled by sabotaged lengths of railroad tracks is haunting.The book begins during 1864, the American Civil War. Baylis Simpson and his family eke out a meager living as sharecroppers in Georgia which, of course, backed the Confederacy. As in all wars, the atrocities play out not only on the battlefield but split this fertile land and its families asunder with obscene travesties against humankind. Baylis Simpson sees his family destroyed. As he and his kin vow vengeance against the murderous rabble taking property and lives that had escaped the Union Army, the Simpsons are caught between the warring lines.One hundred years later, Baylis’s descendent, young Ron Simpson, becomes a U.S. Army helicopter pilot. He volunteers to serve his country as a medevac pilot in Vietnam. His beliefs and his life are turned upside down when, instead, he is assigned to fly a Huey gunship. He loves his country deeply, but will not serve it by flying this killing machine. There is only one option for him; by taking it, he threatens to destroy not just himself, but his family.The book’s chapters switch seamlessly from the physical plight and mental turmoil of one generation to the other, and the reader becomes deeply engrossed in the fate of both, while the book’s prose deftly adapts to the tone and language of the times. Without hammering it home, it left me with a troubling message: We are not heeding history. Hence, we have learned nothing!For me, Sons of My Fathers was indeed a Discovered Diamond earning a sparkling and well-deserved place on Helen Hollick’s discoveringdiamonds.blogspot Review Site.Inge H. Borg
This is a story of one family and two wars separated by 100 years. The two wars happen to be the most divisive in American history – the Civil War of 1861-1865 and the Vietnam War which ended in 1975, but began either in the 1950s or the 1960s. It is a novel, but it is a novel so based on historical and real family events that it could almost be non-fiction. One of the main characters is actually the author.
Welcome to Sons of My Father by Michael Simpson.Simpson tells two stories in this book. One is set largely in 1864, when Simpson’s small farmer ancestors (they were not slave owners) find the entire family caught up in the Civil War as both soldiers and non-combatants. After capturing Chattanooga, General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Union army is advancing on Atlanta.
The countryside is in chaos – advance Union patrols, retreating Confederate soldiers, roaming bands of deserters and even criminals. Baylis Simpson has four sons fighting for the South and a daughter, son, and granddaughter at home. A band of deserters or criminals happens upon the two girls; the daughter is raped and the granddaughter is murdered. Baylis, on leave from the Georgia Home Guard for planting, tracks them down, and exacts revenge, the rapist meeting a particularly gruesome death. Baylis and one of his sons will then find their army units and discover themselves at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, the last hurdle before Sherman can take Atlanta. This is the South in the Civil War. Lawlessness everywhere, law and order breaking down, farms often stripped of anything edible and women and children left to starve.
The second story starts in the early 1960s. Three boys – Alex Granger, Ron Simpson, and Ron’s younger brother Michael – are the closest of friends. Alex grows up with the Simpsons almost as a member of the family. His own father is dead and Ron and Michael’s father Harold, a veteran World War II Marine, helps to raise him. The boys get into the kinds of pranks and escapades that boys often did in the 1960s. But as Alex and Ron graduate from high school, they decide to enlist in the Army. And what’s hanging over both of them is the Vietnam War.
Moving back and forth between the two narratives, Simpson paints a picture of the effects of war, the divisiveness of war, and the tremendous stresses that families experience in wartime. He also paints a picture of what happens when a highly trained helicopter pilot, understanding what happened with the My Lai Massacre, decides he can’t participate in the killing of the enemy. (This is based on a historical situation involving Ron Simpson, one that went to trial in federal court in Atlanta.)
Michael Simpson is a screenwriter, director, and producer of documentaries and feature films. His credits include the movies “Crazy Heart” and “Kidnaping Mr. Heineken” among many others. This is his first novel.
Sons of My Fathers is gripping, moving, and eye-opening. It tells the story of how the idea of duty and honor infuses families down through the generations. And it tells what happens when duty and honor collide with conscience.
Within the pages of this book you will meet members of the Simpson family within two distinct time periods. Both stories will come full circle and are told in separate narrative forms by one of the characters relating their struggles, joys and high jinks that were indicative of the Simpson family. This journey will introduce you the reader to the many generations of this family and give you a close profile of the author. In the past during the time of the Civil War you will meet Ulysses Simpson who along with his father Baylis and Uncle Eon join forces bent on revenge that will place them in danger with the Confederate Army, other soldiers as they forge ahead on many unknown territory with a wagon with feeble horses pulling them hoping to find the right burial ground for the men they are hauling in the back of their wagon. In the present we meet Ron Simpson who enlists in the Army following his father’s path. His father was as you will see in one of the pictures shared in the book was a WWII Marine Corps combat veteran. He was one of the legendary fighting forces combat veteran and one of the of elite instructors as noted on the back page during the Korean War.
In the present we get to know Ron, Michael and their close friend Alex Granger who along with Ron is somewhat of an upstart you might say. Loyal to Ron but yet never surprising readers with his pranks, strong armed ways and of course at times making Michael feel out of place. Their antics become well known, their trouble they get into while in the armed forces at times might get them in the brig or with some type of court martial yet when Michael is attacked at a dance when he innocently asked Diane, who he likes to dance, they rally around him making sure the bullies meet with their just desserts. Diane broke up with Chuck and even though he has a new girlfriend he seems bent on destroying Michael’s interest in her any violent way he can. Michael is the head lifeguard at the beach and Diane is one of the guards.
In the past we meet Baylis, Ulysses and Milton who takes along with them. He’s a teacher and has lost his job. As they travel together they realize they might be from different worlds but have much in common.
When they finally reach their destination Ulysses and Baylis ask to rejoin their regiments to fight and Milton decides to become a missionary of some sort to help the people who have lost families and loved ones. But, when a guard starts to kill and maim those he feels are deserters, the Captain who Milton knows along with Baylis and Ulysses make their point in a very graphic and poignant way.
In the present we learn more about Ron and his stint in the army trying to learn to fly a specific type of plane. He wants to fly unarmed medavac helicopters during combat. These type of missions and helicopter flights have a high mortality rate but instead Ron finds himself flying a Huey gunship. Both Michael and Ron seem to be fighting personal wars within themselves as each one tries to find a place where he will be recognized in their own way. Remembering the past and what happened to the girl that wound up dead will this ever come out? Michael relished his role as head lifeguard until something happened to change it all.
When Julie Lacey drowned and his friend Kenny froze he tried to save the young girl but blamed himself for the failure. Helping a woman come into the club he realized that his boss was prejudice and quit. As Ron realizes that he would fly a Huey Gunship and was being sent along with his friend Alex to Vietnam. Haunted by what he sees on television and the deaths he witnesses himself, Ron is plagued with nightmares that never seem to go away. Alex finds it different and is more hardened to what happens during this war. Michael and Diane seem close for a time as Ron realizes that his enlistment was not what he expected and something snaps within him and goes back in time to his family’s past and might lose everything in the present.
Baylis and Ulysses and Milton bond in the past and then returning to face the Confederates and hoping to make it home to his family alive. As the rape of his daughter and the murder of his niece as too haunt Baylis the book begins with this incident and the burial of Melissa. Can a soldier find himself questioning is service? “Soldier’s of conscience” who would want that title and want to be called that would Ron?
The Civil War and the Vietnam War should be thought of as Civil Wars as both our nation and that of South and North Vietnam were torn apart. As in the past Baylis and Ulysses fought for the North hoping to defeat the South and the present the Vietnam War that most still feel should not have involved our country at all.
There are many issues that are brought to light within this true story and drama as the family is torn apart at the start and fights to find those who killed his loved ones, family loyalties, star crossed lovers, sense of obligation to your role in the army as opposed to patriotism, and conscience in war and a family secret that has been buried for years.
Two wars fought during two different time periods as Baylis and his son fight a war within the confines of their own country and Alex finds the battles terrifying and the end result if tragic for everyone. Ron realizes that he has found God and can no longer justify fighting in a war and killing people. His actions might cost him more than he is willing to give up as he decides to go AWOL. His family is alerted about this desertion but what will the final outcome be? Will he go across the Canadian border or will he return and face the consequences? Baylis too finds a new meaning in God but no one understands why he would let this carnage happen during both time periods.
Listening to Ron’s plight and meeting Vicki who changes his life will he come home when he learns his mother is ill and in the hospital? While Michael and his family are struggling with cold shoulders and being shunned by friends because of his desertion, Harold his own father loses his and things take on more of a tragic turn. While in the past you can smell the cannonballs, the fire, the death and the stench from the holes that many soldiers find themselves hiding in and taken prisoner.
Author Michael Simpson paints a grim picture but a realistic and true picture of two wars fought by his family members each one a civil war among people that wanted their own type of freedoms. The Bluecoats were dangerous and knowing they wanted to blow up Baylis’s regiment and his men would they be able to stop it before more men died? Alex’s death destroyed Ron in many ways and his mother Ginger seemed to withdraw from life while his mother Carlotta faced a different if not more powerful grief.
Baylis faces the soldiers and those that are captured will be sent to prison until the end of the war but General Sherman shows up and demands that one man be executed. The injustices are many and the fact that his men go along with it makes you understand the cruelties of war first hand as one man takes the bullets for the rest accusing himself of being guilty of a crime that was anything but one. In the present Ron comes home but will he be placed in jail or court marshaled?
Some endings prove to revert back to the beginning as the time line of events in each time periods brings to a close the dramatic end to both wars and what happens to Baylis and his son and then Michael and his family as lives end but some start over but how and where?
There are different ways we honor our country and Ron decided that his was to fly the medvac planes that were unarmed. His decision to state he was a conscientious objector caused him to be denied the right and he left to cross the border to Canada. The ending will explain his fate and Baylis’s convictions that he learned when he did a favor of a Confederate soldier who granted him his freedom in a way he would never forget. The ending brings us full circle to the beginning when Ron, Michael and Alex were best buds and got into all sorts of trouble as they relate the story to someone. “ I do solemnly swear in the presence of the Almighty God that I will henceforth and forever faithfully support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Union of States thereunder…” as Baylis made his sons take it to understand the meaning of loyalty to your country. This is a great reminder of what everyone needs to remember today. The documents added, the letters at the end and the pictures bring the story full circle and to life thanks to author Michael Simpsons and the Sons of My Father. As Ron explains the rationale behind the Vietnam War and is feelings about why it was about time to end it and go home. A true story of two wars that cost too many lives.
As a woman, I highly recommend this multi-generational tale, which shows the great strength of southern women (of which I'm one). The book has an unique structure. Either of the two stories, which are set almost a hundred years apart (in the 1860s and 1960s) would be worthy of its own book. Without telling too much about the ending and how these two stories connect, I'll just say the author weaves them together like a master storyteller, taking us back and forth in time between those two eras until they stitch together in a way that was so utterly profound it left me speechless. I'd never heard of the Civil War Battle of Kennesaw Mountain that took place in Georgia but the writer put me in that battle at the "Dead Angle " and it was harrowing.
The story set during the Vietnam War era is at turns funny and heartbreaking. Anyone who lived through those years or wants to understand the "home front" during that war, will find those chapters of special interest. The coming-of-age love story of the author in the late 1960s make me laugh at his shy awkwardness and it also made me cry at the ultimate heartbreak of it all. I just wanted to reach out and hug him and tell him it would all be okay. The brotherly love found in these pages between the author and his older brother, who faced an impossibly difficult decision, probably moved me the most. And the courage of Ron Simpson made me proud of him and, ultimately, my country.
