Date Published: October 3, 2017
Publisher: Belle Reve Press
Dennis and Greer is a nonfiction love story in letters and journals between 2 college students during the Vietnam era. (This is nonfiction that reads like fiction)
A true story that encapsulates the horrors of war and the innocence of young love.
Buried in a trunk for fifty years, this long-forgotten tale, told through letters and journals from the war-torn Vietnam era, has been resurrected.
College students, Dennis and Greer, met and felt a spark just before moving to different states. Their witty correspondence through letters conjured a desire to meet again, but Dennis tried to keep his distance; duty is more important than love.
As the two embarked on their journey into adulthood and navigated their relationship against the backdrop of war, they were writing a love story that will span the test of time.
Excerpt
Dear Greer (poetic, huh?)
This letter is written upon wrinkled
paper, which (as you are an English major), you will realize is symbolic of
suffering and hardship. From having gotten to know me you will recall that I am
never a whiner so I will let the paper rather than the ink bear what ill
tidings are to be borne. You may well ask why I have devoted the introduction
of this epistle to such trivia. As in conversation, I find it necessary to fill
the air with something while I think of something worthwhile to say. While you
write “redundant” over the second “something” in typical gung-ho English major
fashion, I will try to find something worthy enough in content and syntax to
place before your well-read, though brown, eyes.
Not having succeeded in that
undertaking, I will, being forced, continue amid trivialities and redundancies.
How are you? I am fine. (The latter is a comment rather than an answer.) My
present residence is in Carlin, Nevada (as a glance at the envelope, also
wrinkled, will verify—redundancies are tricky) and I receive my mail at P.O.
Box 835. May I say that I had a very pointed reason for mentioning the fact?
Out of fear that you will say within
someone’s hearing that this letter is much bubble bath, as indeed its first two
paragraphs are, I will turn to serious considerations. I long to have the
outpourings of your keen mind and kind heart splashed upon my untidy mind (see
above) like cool water in the sweating face of a Nevada summer laborer. In
other, less revealing words, my first order of business is to insist that you
write me a letter. I will even, in consideration of your talent, pay you by the
word in typical professional fashion.
I dedicated this summer to ridding
myself of fecund thoughts and to the corralling of vagrant impulses, to
secluded study and spiritual growth. I’ve had my preliminary interview and I
will be leaving on my mission in September. I have departed into the desert to
prepare for my calling, to live with the wild beasts and eat locusts and honey.
Please realize that your letters will be a tremendous help to me. I think of
you often.
Memory, hither come,
And tune your merry notes;
And,
while upon the wind
Your
music floats,
I’ll
pour upon the stream
Where
sighing lovers dream,
And
fish for fancies as they pass
Within
the watery glass.
-William Blake
Sincerely yours,
Dennis
About the Author
ASU graduate, Molly Gould, lived in the wilderness for 28 days when she was 16 years old (she’s your go-to-girl in the zombie apocalypse). She now confines herself indoors with the AC full-blast in her sunny sate of AZ. Occasionally, she’ll brave the scorching heat with her husband and four children.
When Molly inherited a treasure of vintage journals and letters, she was swept away by the love story contained within those writings. She couldn’t keep Dennis and Greer to herself, so she began transcribing and Dennis and Greer was born.
