My grandparents, 1915, my grandmother, a Vassar College Student, and my grandfather in his Williams College ROTC uniform. This past Veterans Day I was invited to speak at an area school. I could not because of a schedule conflict. Bemidji School Superintendent Tim Lutz and I started visiting about Veterans Day 2018, the 100th anniversary …
Ships’ Deck Logs, Vietnam Waters Movements 1966-1973
A friend recently asked me to help him retrieve deck log information from the USS Rogers DD876. Ron and I did a West Pac (West Pacific) deployment to Vietnam together in 1966. He is searching for proof in a claim with the VA. Below is a lengthy but very detailed message I received from a …
Writing Your War/Veterans Writer Group
Today is a sad day for our family–the 3rd anniversary of our son’s death. About a year ago one of our local VA Clinic doctors asked me if I would be interested in facilitating a military veteran writer group. This past month I asked the group if it would be okay to post the discussion …
Praise for “Pawns”
Wow is all I can say. Good read!!! The details and the way it flows keeps you not wanting to put it down. Highly recommended for any one looking to really look into someone’s life. ~Daniel T.
Pawns (Chickenhouse Chronicles Book II)
Picking up after Herman, Book 2 chronicles life on the farm once Barbara moves to Minnesota to marry a man she knows only from letters. Between her mental illness and his PTSD, the match is less than happily-ever-after. The book resurrects a decade of abuse, poverty and family dysfunction on an isolated farm in northern Minnesota.
2018 Events
Wendell Affield featured at Senior Center Veteran’s Day program“Researching the Past” by Adventures in Lifelong LearningBook Launch for “Pawns: The Farm, Nebish, Minnesota 1950s” at Watermark Art Center
Pawns Excerpt
1955The Dip It was the winter Randy peed on the pork. After butchering a hog, rather than hanging the two sides in the granary, Herman brought them in and laid them across broken chairs on the porch. One afternoon during a blizzard, Randy, almost four years old, didn’t want to stand outside on the steps. …
NEW RELEASE: “PAWNS” (Chickenhouse Chronicles Book II)
A few years before my mother died, I began interviewing her and making notes. After her death in January 2010, I discovered a treasure trove: 200 years of our family history locked in the chickenhouse—about seventy feet from the old farmhouse where she and I had visited. Over the next eight years I studied and …
About Wendell
It’s one thing to write a book; it’s another to live it. Wendell Affield never knew his father. His childhood was punctuated by a volatile mother and an unpredictable stepfather. At twelve, he and his siblings were placed in foster homes, his mother committed to a mental hospital. At sixteen, he rode the rails out …