Marching Home: To War and Back with the Men of One American Town

By Kevin Coyne

Book Overview

They left Freehold, New Jersey, for service in World War II as six young men-to the army, the navy, and the air corps, to the Pacific, and to Europe-and they returned home alive. But on their return, they faced a new mission as America took a new shape and their community faced new pressures-farms and factories thriving, then fading; creeping suburbs and withering Main Streets; civil rights struggles and race riots. Offering a gripping look at life in wartime, Marching Homefollows each of six men overseas into battles where the enemy was clear and then back home where the lines of combat were more uncertain: the black soldier who endured the segregated army only to face race riots back home and the sailor who watched a kamikaze hurtle toward his ship and then tried to keep peace at home as a police officer. With the stories of these men, Kevin Coyne presents Freehold, with its mixture of village intimacy and city diversity, as a microcosm of the whole sweep of twentieth-century American history. It is a reminder of what America has faced and overcome and will continue to face as the nation marches forward.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670871508
• ISBN13: 9780670871506
• Release Date: February 2003
• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.4" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

We've lost one of our heroes

I enjoyed reading this book as I am from the area. History can get boring when you have to memorize facts. This history is more than facts, these are real people and their real experiences. Sadly, one of the men portrayed in the book passed away this passed Saturday, January 31, 2010. Jim Higgins was well known in Freehold and he will be missed. Another from the greatest generation.

Extraordinary View of Ordinary Lives

In Marching Home, Kevin Coyne offers a touchingly intimate and unsparing look at the lives of six small-town WWII vets. The men are presented as complete human beings, with strengths and weaknesses intact. The author avoids the cloying sentimentality and overreaching generalizations that characterize many recent works about the "greatest generation", allowing the reader to form his or her own opinions and attachments to the central characters. The affection we feel for these men and their town grows naturally as we share their struggles and triumphs. The six men are drawn with such tender honesty that we will know them as we know our own fathers, grandfathers, and uncles - many of whom we will understand more fully after reading this extraordinary book.