Cindy Horrell Ramsey

600 Letters Home Cindy Horrell Ramsey

Immediately following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 18-year-old Georgia farm boy Roy Harrison joins the Navy, leaving behind his family and 17-year-old girlfriend, Evelyn. For almost four years - except for one brief trip home in the summer of 1944 - letters are their only means of communication. For the first seven months, the correspondence is exciting and informative. Roy tells Evelyn about boot camp, being assigned to a ship, traveling up and down the east coast, and seeing sights they both had only dreamed of seeing - like the Statue of Liberty and New York City. But in July, 1942, Roy's battleship, the USS NORTH CAROLINA, enters the war in the Pacific-first stop being a ravaged Pearl Harbor. After seeing sunken battleships, oil and debris still floating in the water, and a glimpse of what he believes to be body parts, Roy is thrust into the realities of war. An uncertain future and government censorship take their toll on Roy's letters. He cannot tell Evelyn where his ship is or anything about the battles, death, and destruction he witnesses and experiences. He begins writing a forbidden diary trying to purge the truths of war from his mind before he writes home. When Evelyn graduates from high school and takes a government job that moves her from Georgia to Washington, DC, to New York City, and finally to a secret place in Tennessee, she cannot tell Roy anything about her job and little about where she lives. Their epic love story unfolds in the midst of war and secrets.