THE CANANDAIGUA LETTERS
A stunningly vivid account of the war on the Korean DMZ in the late '60s, documented by an EMMY-nominated writer/director.
A MEMOIR OF THE LATE '60S
In the late 1960s, North Korean leader Kim Il Sung gazed down across the Chinese mainland and—observing half a million U.S. ground troops mired in Vietnam—decided that the moment had arrived to push the Americans off the Korean peninsula and foment an insurgency in the South. The Pentagon countered by deploying a handful of infantry battalions from the U.S. Army’s Second Division along an eighteen-mile stretch of the Demilitarized Zone, fronting North Korea’s traditional invasion route. What followed was a war that waxed and waned over the course of three years along the Korean DMZ—and so successfully did the Pentagon suppress all reports of this conflict that the story is still unknown today.
The Canandaigua Letters provides a stunningly vivid account of the final year of this military conflict, documented by an Emmy-nominated director and multi-award-winning writer, who looks back half a century to the moment he flunked out of college as a beleaguered sophomore, was yanked from the sanctuary of a Midwestern liberal arts school, and drafted into the U.S. Army.
The most comprehensive and compelling account of the military journey in the Vietnam era—and the bonds that soldiers forged along that path. An astonishing feat of memory.
—Lt. Col. (ret.) Thomas W. Rutledge, U.S. Army
MEET THE AUTHOR
WILLIAM WINSHIP
William Winship is the EMMY-nominated Writer/Director of the acclaimed PBS documentary, Pioneers In Aviation. The author was the recipient of the Stanley Kramer Award for his first play, The Ballplayer, which saw productions in the U.S. and the U.K. He has twice been named Seattle Artist-in-Residence by the Seattle Arts Commission and currently makes his home in that city.
“The title of this memoir was prompted by the discovery of a tightly rubber-banded cache of letters that my sister unearthed shortly after our mother passed away—correspondence penned from various U.S. Army posts and later from the DMZ where I spent my nineteenth and twentieth years—addressed in my familiar, crabbed handwriting to our house in Canandaigua.”
— from the Introduction
What THE Readers Say
Couldn't put it down!
Thoroughly engrossing memoir.
Thoroughly engrossing memoir.
Intensely personal view of one young man’s journey into adulthood through a baptism by fire at the DMZ. A great read!
Thoroughly engrossing memoir.
Thoroughly engrossing memoir.
Thoroughly engrossing memoir.
Thoroughly engrossing memoir. Places you right back in the culture of the late '60s. Very moving.
Powerful and poignant.
Thoroughly engrossing memoir.
Powerful and poignant.
Bill Winship’s Canandaigua Letters is a powerful and poignant story that will resonate with anyone who came of age in the turbulent '60s.
Great read.
A well-written memoir of the 1960s.
Powerful and poignant.
A wonderfully written book with vivid memories that paint a clear picture of military and college life in the late '60s
A well-written memoir of the 1960s.
A well-written memoir of the 1960s.
A well-written memoir of the 1960s.
I devoured the book and was left wanting more.
Awesome!
A well-written memoir of the 1960s.
A well-written memoir of the 1960s.
Great book and great read. I really enjoyed this book from cover to cover.