IN A ROCKET MADE OF ICE: AMONG THE CHILDREN OF WAT OPOT

By Gail Gutradt

Alfred A. Knopf, 2014

322 pages, $25.95

ISBN 978-0-385-35347-2

When Bar Harbor author Gail Gutradt offered to volunteer at the Wat Opot Children’s Community in Cambodia in 2005, she never dreamed of the loving impact she would have on orphaned and abandoned AIDS/HIV-infected children, and the profound impact they would have on her. “I started to contemplate what it is like to love a child who might die,” she admits.

Advertisement

“In A Rocket Made Of Ice” is a moving memoir of Gutradt’s years as a volunteer caregiver in Wat Opot, helping care for youngsters, babies to teenagers, who have been rejected by their families and Cambodian society for a disease that is not their fault.

Gutradt has written for magazines and newspapers before, but this is her first book — a remarkably lucid, candid and inspiring appraisal of a privately run hospice/orphanage, and the dedicated, compassionate lifework of its two founders: American Vietnam veteran Wayne Dale Matthysse and Cambodian Buddhist Vandin San.

She tells of Wat Opot’s founding, its growth as a nearly self-sufficient community providing medical care, education and safe sanctuary for society’s outcasts, as well as its constant struggle with fundraising and acceptance as a “workshop for souls.”

Best, however, are Gutradt’s warm and heartbreaking stories of the children, boys and girls, the ones who survive the disease and grow up to lead productive lives — and those who die in her arms. And Gutradt is forever changed: “I learned the cry of abandonment, the sound a small child makes when everything and everyone she ever knew has suddenly been taken away and she is facing her first night among strangers.”

There is laughter and happiness, too, as the children learn to play with American toys like Legos and Barbie dolls. However, more importantly, she reveals that the children are safe in a loving, stable environment.

TURNING THE TIDE AT GETTYSBURG: HOW MAINE SAVED THE UNION

Advertisement

By Jerry Desmond

Down East Books, 2014

141 pages, $16.95

ISBN 978-1-60893-274-0

Thousands of books have been written about the Civil War, many about the battle at Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863 — “the largest single battle ever fought in North America.”

Maine native and historian Jerry Desmond now adds to that historiography, but his book has a nice twist. “Turning The Tide At Gettysburg” is a slim volume that focuses on the gallantry and sacrifice of Maine soldiers in that iconic battle.

Advertisement

At Gettysburg, the Union’s Army of the Potomac mustered nearly 90,000 soldiers, including more than 4,000 Maine men. The Maine soldiers were organized in eight infantry regiments, three artillery batteries, one cavalry regiment and one sharpshooter company. And as Desmond so clearly shows, the Maine soldiers fought in every critical action during that bloody three-day slugfest, and he claims that their bravery and steadfast discipline under fire probably saved the battle for the Union.

In a chronological series of grisly battlefield vignettes, Desmond tells of the ordeal of all the Maine units, including the 20th Maine under Colonel Joshua Chamberlain. Everyone knows that story, but few know of the heroism of the artillerymen of Lieutenant Greenlief Stevens’ 5th Maine Battery on Culp’s Hill; or how the 17th Maine covered the withdrawal of the 1st Division in the face of relentless Confederate assaults, fighting until “the last cartridge was gone” and bayonets were their only weapons; or the Maine sharpshooters who lost one third of their men in just one afternoon.

Mainers fought in the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield, at Devil’s Den, on Culp’s Hill, Little Round Top and in the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, receiving the full force of Confederate artillery bombardment and Pickett’s Charge. This book is well-supported by maps and photos, and is a fitting tribute to Maine’s Civil War veterans.

Bill Bushnell lives and writes in Harpswell.


Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.

Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.