Rasa Gustaitis, who was a child when she fled Lithuania and came to America, centers this compelling historical memoir on her pursuit of traces of her father, last known to be in a grim Soviet prison. A lifelong journalist, the author follows four generations of a family caught up in the tumultuous history of Eastern Europe, beginning with the childhoods of her extraordinary parents and continuing to the Singing Revolution that liberated one small, defiant country from the grip of the USSR. Flight is eye-opening, the story of a little-examined landscape within a war that changed the world. The author paints the details of everyday life with poignancy and joy, while placing individual lives within the grand sweep of history. Like all the best accounts of the past, this beautifully written book leaves us with food for thought about our own lives and times.

"A grand and epic prose poem . . . The purely human experience of war in the Pacific, written in the graceful imagery of a human being who--somehow--survived."--Tom Hanks

See Robert Leckie's story in the HBO miniseries The Pacific

Here is one of the most riveting first-person accounts ever to come out of World War II. Robert Leckie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in January 1942, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In Helmet for My Pillow we follow his odyssey, from basic training on Parris Island, South Carolina, all the way to the raging battles in the Pacific, where some of the war's fiercest fighting took place. Recounting his service with the 1st Marine Division and the brutal action on Guadalcanal, New Britain, and Peleliu, Leckie spares no detail of the horrors and sacrifices of war, painting an unvarnished portrait of how real warriors are made, fight, and often die in the defense of their country.

From the live-for-today rowdiness of marines on leave to the terrors of jungle warfare against an enemy determined to fight to the last man, Leckie describes what war is really like when victory can only be measured inch by bloody inch. Woven throughout are Leckie's hard-won, eloquent, and thoroughly unsentimental meditations on the meaning of war and why we fight. Unparalleled in its immediacy and accuracy, Helmet for My Pillow will leave no reader untouched. This is a book that brings you as close to the mud, the blood, and the experience of war as it is safe to come.

About the Author
Robert Leckie was the author of more than thirty works of military history as well as Marines, a collection of short stories, and Lord, What a Family!, a memoir. Raised in Rutherford, New Jersey, he started writing professionally at age sixteen, covering sports for The Bergen Evening Record of Hackensack. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps on the day following the attack on Pearl Harbor, going on to serve as a machine gunner and as an intelligence scout and participating in all 1st Marine Division campaigns except Okinawa. Leckie was awarded five battle stars, the Naval Commendation Medal with Combat V, and the Purple Heart. Helmet for My Pillow (Random House, 1957) was his first book; it received the Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association award upon publication.

“I really enjoyed this book and thought the cliffhanger ending was incredible! I didn't see it coming and think that author Roberta Kagan has done a brilliant job at ensuring that the second book in the series will be one no fan will miss!” —Kim’s Reading Nook

When three little girls—Anna, Bernie, and Elica—make a pact to be blood sisters for life, they believe nothing can come between them.

Austria 1929. Anna is from an affluent Jewish family, while Bernie and Elica are from poor Austrian families who barely make ends meet. As they get older, their social differences become all too real.

With infectious Jew-hate-laden rhetoric from Nazi Germany spreading into Austria, it is only a matter of time before their bond of friendship gets severely tested.

How strong is a bond sealed in blood?

Author Bio:

Roberta Kagan is a USA Today bestselling author of historical Jewish fiction mainly set in WWII. Kagan’s father was Romany and her mother was Jewish. She learned about the Holocaust when she was very young. Since then she’s researched, met with survivors, and even met with children and grandchildren of SS officers. Kagan believes that through her work she must tell these stories before all of the survivors are gone.

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