Title: When Johnny Doesn’t Come Marching Home
Author: Marian Small
Publisher: Friesen Press
ISBN: 978-1460286760
Pages: 360
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs, Military
Reviewed by: Michelle Robertson
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Pacific Book Review
As a boy growing up in Defiance, Ohio during the pre-World War I years of America, John Small was like every other boy of his youth; athletic, intelligent, and full of adventure. John enjoyed playing sports during his youthful years in school and would be known as the top athlete in football and baseball. But a ball would not be the only thing John would be chasing. Shortly after his high school graduation, John sought adventure in joining The Ohio National Guard with Brigadier General Pershing, to capture the known villain of Mexico, Pancho Villa. During this exciting adventure John would not only get to know the life of a soldier in the camps, but he also found romance with a young woman named Mary whom he would eventually make his wife. Although the happily married camp living couple was not in his future for long as the news of the war in Europe brought word the allied forces of France and England were in dire need of the United States’ assistance. As such the search for Pancho Villa ended and training for what would be World War I began.
When Johnny Doesn’t Come Marching Home, written by Marian Small, is a captivating factual story of a young man’s experiences, hardships and adventures entering into World War I and the years to follow. The story is about the author’s father, John Russell Small, as she tells the experiences as a soldier through actual handwritten and typed letters, photographs, official United States documentation, as well as John Small’s handwritten personal diary. Having access to the above factual recourses allowed the author to tell the real life, up close and personal, true story of John Small. Having such personal writings as letters to his wife, family members and friends, as well as diary entries, allows readers entry into the heart and mind of a soldier, a son, a husband and a friend as he expressed through writing the hardships of battling a war overseas. Between all the factual evidence of letters and documents of personal accounts and information, the book is elegantly well developed and laid out to make a pleasing yet heartfelt read. The raw emotion of fear, guilt, happiness, sadness, anger, loneliness and many more emotions can be felt by the reader as they turn each page. The amount of courage along with willpower and strength John Small as a soldier and father had to produce, while still providing for his family, despite all the war anomalies aimed at him, is truly astonishing.
Being an avid reader of American History novels, I don’t often come across personal accounts of a soldier’s experiences with World War I. The amount of actual facts and documentation throughout the book makes me, as book lover and history fanatic “tinkled pink”, as they say. I certainly highly recommend this book be put in all public libraries, history classrooms and homes of fellow readers who love historical genre.
5 Star Review
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