Caleb Pirtle, III

I received this book free from the author through LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review. This book is about a programmed assassin without a memory or a life and the Night of Broken Glass, a massive attack on Jews throughout Germany, ordered by Hitler just before the start of WW II. Even though this book was historical fiction I found it scary how an individual very close to the president of the United States could and would do anything to prevent photos that were taken of the events on November 9-10, 1938, the Night of Broken Glass, from getting out of Germany and to the American press for publication. American and German businessmen who were doing business together were afraid that if what really happened was exposed they would lose massive amounts of money and would be ruined. This book will make you think about what goes on in our government and it will stick in my mind and conscience for a very long time.… (mehr)

The stories in this collection are true. No. Let me re-phrase that. Chasing Love and Other Ghosts is a collection of short stories and essays that form a kind of memoir of my experiences as a newspaperman, a travel editor, and an author.

I know that some of these stories are indeed fact. I was there to experience them first-hand, and they reflect my own perspective on the events, told as accurately as I remember them.

Many of the stories were told to me as true by eyewitnesses, by people who talked to eyewitnesses, by those who heard second-hand eyewitness accounts repeated and edited over an early-morning gallon or two of coffee down at the corner café.

And the information behind some of the stories was gleaned by research, primarily from libraries and old, yellowed newspaper files. These were stories I had heard and knew long before Google joined our existence.

I strongly believe that life is fiction. We can’t believe that it actually happens, but it does. And memorable fiction is driven by characters and conflict. So it is with life as well.

These are the stories of the common man and woman, who search for love, feel pain and heartache and grief, who have laughed and cried, sometimes over the same tragedy, whose own lives are filled with drama, whether they ever stop to acknowledge it or not, and who spend most of their lives chasing the ghosts of their memories.

As individuals, we are forever defined by our loves and our ghosts, and often there is little difference between the two.… (mehr)