Becoming Awol

Jack Hand Young Jack is followed on the road with his growing Irish Catholic family through the Depression years as his 'con-man' father tries to keep the family going using tactics that keep him one jump ahead of sheriffs from Pennsylvania to Florida. A Catholic orphanage takes the children when the father is finally put away and Jack becomes a child mystic in self-defense against the cruelties of his superiors. The father's attempt to reunite the family fails when his alcoholism reasserts itself, and Jack finds himself in St. Joseph's Protectorate for Homeless Boys in Pittsburgh's Hill District. Sex, pot and alcohol enter his life then as he fends for himself through several stories. At the outset of WWII he enlists in the Army, and the next stories recount his reactions to North Africa, Sicily, maneuvers in England, Omaha Beach on D-day and on through France, Belgium, Holland and Germany where he is wounded for the second time. The series ends with a story entitled 'œRed Cross Girl,' an unusual love affair pursued in war-torn Holland and Germany. The last line in the series leads to the first line of AWOL (already in print).Hand, Jack is the author of 'Becoming Awol' with ISBN 9781413703993 and ISBN 1413703992.