Camels, Adventure, and Winning WWII – My Book Review

Camels, Adventure, and Winning WWII – My Book Review

“Horses are used for transportation in the area, including for our officers, and a jeep checks out the runway before every flight to be sure camels haven’t wandered on.”

When I started with the first chapter of Landing In My Present, I sighed and said to myself this is going to be another retelling of wishes regarding that I wish I’d done this, I wish I’d that with my past and present. By Chapter Eight – I was enthralled with the story. To be honest it was Chapter Eight that made me love this book, along with the ensuing chapters.

Chapter Eight is a commanding story told through a letter of a US serviceman serving our country during WW II while he was stationed in Nigeria. This letter transported me back in time. Yes – I mainly loved it due to the wildlife sharing. Who knew that at that time Nigeria grew peanuts for export?  He explained about troops of monkeys and camels on the runway. To be honest I did not realize Nigeria would have camels. My what sights to have beheld with Charles Walker’s eyes back then.

Mary Walker Clark took herself and me, as a reader on a historical journey through time, as well as the present with part of it right in my own backyard in Landing In My Present. I had no idea this book would hit close to home for me for the towns of Plainview and Lubbock.

Mary Clark weaves the past and the present exquisitely. She’s a daughter in search of connections to the world larger than the arid Texas towns of Plainview or Lubbock where she grew up. Her adventurous spirit took her to India and China to see the places her dad saw and went to during his service in the war.

The out-and-out best part of this book for me was discovering WWII history that I never heard about regarding India and China and Sino-American soldiers. A book is not lost to the massive stacks of other books if you can learn from it and Clark does a superb job at conveying this unknown history.

The one major item I would have loved to have seen in this book is a map showing the areas of Kunming, China, and Assam, India where Clark visited and her father was stationed. I looked it up. Both she and her dad were a long, long, long way from Texas – like over 8,000 miles.

Another wondrous fact was learning that Assam has tea plantations. And to be honest who knew that at one-time lettuce was grown north of Lubbock where cotton and corn fields are now the dominant crops grown.

Landing In My Present was an exemplary reading surprise with splendid writing.  It is a book that recounts the history and how our history should be remembered – through the eyes and words of people that actually lived it. It is a book that will open your world up to the importance of these two countries and how both were vital in helping to win WWII. It will take you away to a time that was much simpler, most importantly it will take you along on the journey of a daughter searching for connections with her dad and the larger world around her. Thank you, Mary, for opening my world a little bit more.