Dear Mom, Dad and Ethel: World War II through the Eyes of a Radio Man by Mark Stuart Ellison, Eli Ellison

From the Publisher

Don Quix loves taking risks. When Don is caught AWOL with buddy Ken Jackson, his dreams of flying are shattered, but he still manages to become a sergeant radio truck operator in a fighter control squadron. Ken is sent to a demolition unit.

During a baseball game in a French forest, Don narrowly escapes a sniper's bullet. In Verviers, and Liège Belgium, he has daily encounters with buzz bombs but suffers only minor cuts dodging shrapnel. Using forged passes to visit a girlfriend; he freely roams restricted areas when similarly-daring soldiers are court-martialed.

But Sergeant Quix's jauntiness is tempered by tragic loss. His reunion with Ken in Verviers is violently cut short. Another close friend, Technical Sergeant Stanley Firestone, dies in a V-1 attack while pulling a shift for a newly engaged radio man.

Meanwhile, Don begins a torrid love affair with Denise Vervier, a beautiful Belgian seamstress far wiser than her 23 years. Denise's husband was sent to a forced labor camp four years ago and is presumed dead. When he unexpectedly returns, Don and Denise face the most difficult decision of their lives.

Lancaster Sunday News

Mark Stuart Ellison collaborated with his late father, Eli Ellison, to present a thinly veiled account of the elder man's wartime experiences in paperback and hardcover.

The novel "paints an absorbing picture of the daily life of America's greatest generation," says Dr. Stanley J. Michalak, Franklin & Marshall College government professor. "Vets will find themselves reliving their own experiences - the boredom, the loneliness, the fear, and the role of fate in life and death. For the rest of us, it is social history at its best."

The coming-of-age story contains romance, tragedy, and comedy. Actual letters home written by the elder Ellison help to portray fictional enlistee Don Quix as he serves in England and Belgium in the last two years of the war.

The younger Ellison has worked as an attorney and reporter. His articles have appeared in Physicians Financial News, Dutchess Magazine, and The Poughkeepsie Journal. His father was a retired New York City schoolteacher.

Poughkeepsie Journal.com

This book puts the reader on the front line. Mark Stuart Ellison co-authored Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel with his father, Eli Ellison, who died in 2004. The story draws on the elder Ellison's experiences in World War II as a radio truck operator in Western Europe between 1943 and 1945.

Don Quix, a daring ladies man with dreams of being a pilot, is grounded for being absent without leave and is forced to head up a fighter control squadron from the ground, which lands him at the front lines at the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium.

Using letters sent home, romance, and history, Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel shows what life was like for the everyday soldier.

About.com

Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel is an energetic and enjoyable read, offering more of the roller coaster emotions evoked by the film Saving Private Ryan, but from the real-life perspective of veteran Eli Ellison, ordinary hero of the Greatest Generation. It tells the story of young soldiers in the European theater during the second half of the Second World War. One moment GIs are laughing, and the next, one of them is blown apart by enemy fire and it is all riveting. It is a type of memoir, one of letters and history.

Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel is advertised as 90 percent true, with names and other incidentals changed to protect the guilty and the innocent. The sex scenes are claimed 100 percent true and are often hilarious, if rather raw, proving a believable addition to a coming-of-age subplot.

Eli Ellison and his son Mark present Eli's story from the perspective of youth through the filter of age and wisdom. In our time of Iraq and other wars, young men and women contemplating a stint in the armed services should read Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel. In doing so, they will be better prepared for things to come. Our World War II vets and their families will experience fond memories and filed-away sadness in these pages. This important book provides the catharsis and homage that they deserve.

What People Are Saying

Hans L. Trefousse
Hans L. Trefousse, Historian
I enjoyed Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel so much I could hardly put it down. The authors write very well, and the mixture of fiction and fact are very admirable. I enjoyed it particularly because I, too, was in Verviers [Belgium] during the war, our war, now six wars ago. Dear Mom, Dad & Ethel ought to be widely read as an excellent way of recalling World War II.

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