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Summary
Summary
In 2005, First Sergeant Charles Monroe King began to write what would become a two-hundred-page journal for his son in case he did not make it home from the war in Iraq. Charles King, forty-eight, was killed on October 14, 2006, when an improvised explosive device detonated under his Humvee on an isolated road near Baghdad. His son, Jordan, was seven months old. A Journal for Jordan is a mother's letter to her son - fierce in its honesty - about the father he lost before he could even speak. It is also a father's advice and prayers for the son he will never know. A father figure to the soldiers under his command, Charles moved naturally into writing to his son. In neat block letters, he counseled him on everything from how to withstand disappointment and deal with adversaries to how to behave on a date. And he also wrote, from his tent, of recovering a young soldier's body, piece by piece, from a tank - and the importance of honoring that young man's life. He finished the journal two months before his death while home on a two-week leave, so intoxicated with love for his infant son that he barely slept. Finally, this is the story of Dana and Charles together - two seemingly mismatched souls who loved each other deeply. She was a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor for the New York Times who struggled with her weight. He was a decorated military officer with a sculpted body who got his news from television. She was impatient, brash, and cynical about love. He was excruciatingly shy and stubborn, and put his military service before anything else. In these pages, we relive with Dana the slow unfolding of their love, their decision to become a family, the chilling news that Charles has been deployed to Iraq, and the birth of their son. In perhaps the most wrenching chapter in the book, Dana recounts her search for answers about Charles's death. Unsatisfied with the army's official version of what happened and determined to uncover the truth, she pored over summaries of battalion operations reports and drew on her well-honed reporting skills to interview the men who were with Charles on his last convoy, his commanding officers, and other key individuals. In the end, she arrived at an account of Charles's death - and his last days in his battalion - that was more difficult to face than the story she had been told, but that affirmed the decency and courage of this warrior and father. A Journal for Jordan is a tender introduction, a loving good-bye, a reporter's inquiry into her soldier's life, and a heartrending reminder of the human cost of war. From the Hardcover edition.
Author Notes
DANA CANEDY is a senior editor at the New York Times , where she has been a journalist for twelve years. In 2001, she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for "How Race Is Lived in America," a series on race relations in the United States. Raised near Fort Knox, she lives in New York City with her son, Jordan.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Inspired by a journal her fiance wrote to their infant son while stationed as a sergeant in Iraq, New York Times editor Canedy tenderly recreates the couple's love story and decision to have a baby before he died. Canedy, an army brat herself, vowed to stay away from military men, but at 33, she was attracted to the shy, newly divorced artist and first sergeant Charles Monroe King, whom she met in the home of her parents in Radcliff, Ky., even if not quite like the intellectual men she typically dated back in New York. Over several years, their relationship developed despite their busy, separate lives, and when Charles was ordered to duty in Iraq in 2005, they discussed marriage and decided to conceive a child. Charles could not get back for baby Jordan's delivery, and the sergeant spent only two weeks with his baby son before returning to duty--he was killed in 2006. Canedy's account of Charles's last visit with his wife and child is heartbreaking. Unflinching and thorough, Canedy offers a sense of shared grief with other families whose loved ones have died in the war. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
In spare, poignant prose, New York Times assistant national news editor Canedy bares the human cost of the Iraq war. An independent woman skeptical of marriage, the author found herself at age 33 falling in love with First Sgt. Charles King, "a gentle soul [whose] heart was as big as his biceps." It was 1998, and Canedy, the daughter of a former drill sergeant, had never wanted to be a military wife who planned her career around her husband's tours of duty. She was initially conflicted about her feelings for the physically imposing yet modest King, a commanding leader who was also a tender artist who drew portraits of angels. Canedy slowly succumbed to his charms, and by the time King left for Iraq in December 2005, she was five months pregnant and they were engaged. The sergeant had already begun writing a journal for his unborn son, Jordan, who was six months old when King was killed in Iraq, one month before he was to return to his family. Addressed to their son, Canedy's narrative seeks to capture his father's essence for him. It includes excerpts from King's journal, which reveal the soul of a beautiful and decent man. "Always share your gifts with others," he advises Jordan. "Laughter is great medicine for the soul," and "sometimes you get lucky and catch a rainbow." King put his military duty above family, refusing to take leave to attend his son's birth. Taunted by a commanding officer, he knowingly participated in the recklessly unsafe final mission that killed him because he felt obligated to undergo the same risks as his soldiers. Canedy honestly describes her anger at his death; robbed of her future family life, she felt "agony, so raw that even breathing hurts." A gut-wrenching memoir of love unexpectedly eviscerated. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
Dana Canedy tries to understand the loss of her fiancé in Iraq. FIRST SGT. CHARLES M. KING was killed in action near Baghdad on Oct. 14, 2006, after an improvised device detonated under his vehicle. He left behind his partner of eight years, Dana Canedy, a seneditor at The New York Times, and 6-month-old son, Jordan. He also behind a 200-page journal containing thoughts, remembrances and pieces of advice meant to guide his son through life in the event that King "did not make' it home" from Iraq. Canedy has used this journal as the basis of a memoir, layering her own recollections alongside King's. The result, "A Journal for Jordan," is a hauntingly beautiful account of a family fractured by war. Canedy began the project only months after King's death, writing a piece about Jordan's journal that appeared in The Times in January 2007. Like the article, the memoir is filled with vivid and heartbreaking details of the man she lost. Canedy finds herself talking about King "in the present tense" because "my mind has not yet recalibrated itself." Afraid her memories of him will slip away, she lingers on the traits only a lover would notice. The way King laughed, the scar on his knee, the complex interplay between his personal and professional duties - Canedy describes these features with such care that one feels Charles King is alive and breathing. Her talent at evoking character makes the account of King's life and death not simply a story about the injustice of war, but a project in resurrection. Canedy allows King to come alive for her son and, to our benefit, for us. Her ability to do so is in large part due to her warm and accessible persona on the page. Portraying herself as "loquacious, assertive and impatient" as well as "obstinate and impulsive," the author brings light and air to what might otherwise be a claustrophobic tale. Canedy and King were opposites in many ways. She was career-oriented and extroverted, while he tended to be artistic and shy. At King's funeral, Canedy learned that he had a "long list of military medals, 56 in all," including "two Bronze Stars, a Purple Heart and 11 Army Achievement Medals. Canedy didn't know King had been so impressively decorated. He had been too modest to tell her. Despite his many admirable qualities, Canedy refuses to portray King "as a saint." He had flaws, of course - most pointedly, that "he put his military service ahead of his family." In the journal. King wrote that "enlisting in the Army was one of the best decisions" he had ever made. He had "no regrets." Still, he had long suffered for such dedication. "The sight of blood gave him flashbacks," Canedy writes. "Chemical sprays he received during the first gulf war left permanent splotches on his arms. For years he was haunted by images of combat, unable to speak about them even to me." Some of the most gripping moments occur when Canedy uses her skills as a reporter to interview those who witnessed the attack, reconstructing the events from multiple accounts. She received conflicting versions of King's death, and quickly learned that the military often sanitizes the story. She also came to understand the intense loyalty and admiration King's fellow soldiers felt for him, as well as the suffering inflicted on Iraqis. In the confused aftermath of the explosion that killed King, American snipers fired on a van that appeared to be fleeing the scene of the attack. Upon looking inside, they found "no weapons or explosives." One of the passengers was a woman five months pregnant, alive but "shot in the abdomen." Canedy was never able to determine what happened to this woman, although "the thought of her baby dying from a gunshot wound before he or she ever took a breath haunts me." "I could not be at your birth because of the war," King wrote to Jordan. One cannot help imagining the endless list of events this man will miss in the life of his only son. Canedy understands that one day Jordan will want to know the reasons for his father's absence. He will want to know why we were in Iraq, what was achieved there and who was responsible for the death of his father. Canedy believes "there will be no easy answers" when that day comes. Perhaps his mother's important memoir will be the place to start. Danielle Trussoni, the author of "Falling Through the Earth: A Memoir" is working on her first novel.
Library Journal Review
When First Sgt. Charles Monroe King was killed in Iraq on Oct. 14, 2006, he left behind a 200-page journal addressed to his infant son, Jordan, covering topics as varied as how to behave on a date and what it feels like to lose men in battle. The journal itself was a gift to King from Jordan's mother, Canedy, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor with the New York Times. Canedy raises her own questions, e.g., why did King volunteer for his fatal mission? Her keen editorial eye prevents the material from becoming overly sentimental. For the many widows of the Iraq War and anyone who wants to understand their plight. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 8/08; optioned for a film by Denzel Washington.]-EB (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.