A Novel About The Korean War?

I was working on my sixth novel and had just finished a single chapter detailing the major character’s being sent to Korea while serving in the U.S. Army. I did this with the full realization of what a friend had told me some years earlier.

He had written a whole novel about the war and had landed an agent who was having a hard time finding a publisher. Finally my friend got his first real clue as to the problem when his manuscript came back for the last time. Atop the submission letter written by his agent were just three words signed cryptically by the latest publisher to reject it.

"Sorry, wrong war."

Huh?  All I could think about was Richard Condon’s THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, James Michener’s THE BRIDGES OF TOKO-RI, and, more recently, James Brady’s THE BOYS OF AUGUST.

But I was forced to realize that publishers can have prejudices even when it comes to wars and that unpublished novelists have no choice but to pay attention—at least until either we gain the clout that comes with being published or the ability to be cunningly brilliant. 

Kate Walbert in THE GARDENS OF KYOTO deftly weaves a spell about a romance that takes place in the mid-1950s while citing a single but graphic incident during the war in Korea. Her writing and the mood it creates is absolutely intoxicating. I keep the novel handy for inspiration.

And I’m keeping alive my own major character’s experience during the Korean War. All I did was add the scene where his best friend was riddled by enemy machine gun bullets and died in his arms.