Description

“With fabulous verve, The League of Other halves endured to talk fact to energy to deliver their POW/MIA husbands house from Vietnam. And with fabulous verve, Heath Hardage Lee has chronicled their little-identified tale ― a profile of braveness that spotlights Sixties-technology army Other halves who forge mystery codes with bravery, chutzpah and elegance. In truth, I couldn’t placed it down.”
― Beth Macy, writer of Dopesick and Factory Man

“Exhilarating and galvanizing.”
― Elaine Showalter, Washington Submit

The precise tale of the fierce band of ladies who battled Washington―and Hanoi―to deliver their husbands house from the jungles of Vietnam.

On February 12, 1973, 100 and 16 males who, simply six years in advance, have been prime flying Military and Air Power pilots, shuffled, limped, or have been carried off an enormous army shipping airplane at Clark Air Base within the Philippines. Those American servicemen had persisted years of brutal torture, saved shackled and ravenous in solitary confinement, in rat-infested, mosquito-encumbered prisons, the worst of which was once The Hanoi Hilton.

Months later, the primary Vietnam POWs to go back house could be told that their rescuers have been their Other halves, a gaggle of ladies that integrated Jane Denton, Sybil Stockdale, Louise Mulligan, Andrea Rander, Phyllis Galanti, and Helene Knapp. Those girls, who shaped The Nationwide League of Households, could by no means have known as themselves “feminists,” however they’d turn into the POW and MIAs such a lot fervent advocates, going to ordinary lengths to facilitate their husbands’ freedom―and to account for lacking army males―by way of relentlessly lobbying govt leaders, undertaking a savvy media marketing campaign, undertaking covert conferences with antiwar activists, and such a lot astonishingly, serving to to code mystery letters to their imprisoned husbands.

In a web page-turning paintings of narrative non-fiction, Heath Hardage Lee tells the tale of those exceptional girls for the primary time. The League of Other halves is positive to be on everybody’s should-learn listing.