Story cold be lighter - way too many details

books:


	• Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps John Schaeffer, Frank Schaeffer Carroll & Graf, 2002 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 59 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Story cold be lighter - way too many details

I had heard Mr. Schaeffer speak about his book and was anxious to get it for my husband. I am trying to read it now but it just keeps dragging on. He is a much better conversationalist. I am only one-third of the way through and I find myself having a hard time picking it up to finish. Maybe you need to be a military man to enjoy it. Yet again, his interview about the book was terrific!!!

Keeping Faith

I loved this book. If your child (son or daughter) has joined the Marines, it is a must read. This book follows a recruit through boot camp, and the journey that his father takes too. They volunteer, we are drafted.

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Father and Son Mature Together

First, a disclaimer. I am a retired Naval officer who spent a good amount of his career working with Marine Corps enlisted men. I have an unashamed bias towards the Corps.

This book works at several levels. It shows the growth of a unruly but very bright young man and how he reacts to and comes to understand the hard discipline of an elite combat organization.

The father, a country club liberal, is consoled by his social circle when the son joins the Marines (as an enlisted man, yet) while their children go off to Ivy League schools. The father comes to accept his son's decision, then becomes proud of the choice and what it has led to.

It draws a stark picture of how discipline is instilled in a group of young men and women being trained for the most bitter kind of combat. And it shows the loyalty they develop for the Corps and importantly, towards their fellow Marines. The latter part of the book has several poignant scenes -- aspiring Marines helping a physically weak but dedicated young Puerto Rican boy through the trials of the final week of testing. He had the right stuff, he was one of them and they made sure he succeeded. It shows the tenderness they exhibited to a young, pregnant, unmarried female Marine after she and her boyfriend are separated during training.

Whatever one's feeling towards the military, this shows how pride and discipline are developed and how important they are for a military force.

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Good insight

My son joine the USMC early this year and recently graduated. My father was in the USMC as was my brothers and myself! We use to live at Parris Island, SC and I grew up seeing recruit training not only experiencing it. I would recommend this book if you or someone you know is either considering joining or has a son or daughter thinking about it. It does not 'candy coat' the experience. The vendor I purchased it from was quick and very courteous. It arrived in excellent condition and I'll order through them again! [...]

Good book for Marine Recruit parents

I found the part of the book written by the son to be very interesting.
I believe he gave a very good insight about the trials of Marine boot camp. I started skipping over the father's part of the book as I did not identify with him. I'm glad I read it.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

In 1998, Frank Schaeffer was a successful novelist living in "Volvo-driving, higher-education worshipping" Massachusetts with two children graduated from top universities. Then his youngest child, straight out of high school, joined the U.S. Marine Corps. Written in alternating voices by eighteen-year-old John and his father, Frank, Keeping Faith takes readers in riveting fashion through a family's experience of the U.S. Marine Corps. From being broken down and built back up on Parris Island (and being the parent of a child undergoing that experience), to the growth of both father and son and their separate reevaluations of what it means to serve. From Frank's realization that among his fellow soccer dads "the very words ?boot camp' were pejorative, conjuring up ?troubled youths at risk' " to John's learning that "the Marine next to you is more important than you are," Keeping Faith is a fascinating and personal reconsideration of issues of class, duty, and patriotism. But as John and his fellow recruits battle to make the cut?and John's family struggles to deal with the worry and separation, it is also an extremely timely, moving, and wonderfully written human interest story?a moving chronicle of love, duty and patriotism in contemporary America. "Beautifully written ... great insight and unselfconscious humor."?Publishers Weekly

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