The Lotus Eaters

The Lotus Eaters was selected as the book for May 2011 by the Boulder Junction group.  Even though it's a little early to post about the book, I wanted to share some websites and images that are making the book feel "real" to me and didn't want to forget them before our discussion.

Lotus Eaters review -- Washington Post review by Masha Hamilton, the author of The Camel Bookmobile -- another good book.

Fall of Saigon -- If you Google "fall of Saigon", the second or third hit will be images. There are a couple of the helicopter landing on the roof of the Embassy, a few of people piled up against the fences and a number of other photos that show what it must have looked like to Helen.

Links to the photographers and images that the author said she researched while doing the book.

Dickey Chapelle  -- Shorewood, WI native who becomes one of the first female war correspondents and the first female reporter approved by the Pentagon to parachute in with the troops in Vietnam.  There is a link to her photographs at the end of the article. She was killed in Vietnam after stepping on a land mine. Henri Huet was another photographer who was with Dickey at the time and photographed her last rites.

Catherine Leroy -- This is a link to an obituary published by the National Press Photographers Association. Images of her photography can be found by Googling her name. Once again, the second or third hit will be images. She made the cover of Life magazine with a photograph she took of her North Vietnamese captors at the time of her release.  Can you imagine anyone being this gutsy?

Kate Webb -- War correspondent and journalist.  Kate Webb was also captured and presumed dead.  She got to read her "first" obituary in 1971 after being held 23 days.  According to the real 2007 obituary, she continued working until 2001 when she figured she was too old to do the front line reporting she liked. 

Barbara Gluck -- Female war photographer who is still living and doing photography.  If you click on the link "About Barbara" you can see she had quite a few firsts too.