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3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Great Front Porch Read; Just Add Lemonade! Apr 21, 2009
By Mary C. Chace
Set during WWII, Walking Wounded: A Wartime Love Story (by Marshall Cook) unfolds the workaday world of the Greatest Generation in Madison, WI.
Rejected by Uncle Sam because of a bum leg, Jimmy McGinnity fills the shoes left by those who don combat boots to save the world from Hitler. He must battle his own demons if he is to succeed in his new post as photographer for the local newspaper, make peace with his alcoholic father, and win the love a woman who seems just out of reach. How does life and love in middle America stand a chance when compared with the heroism and valor of a battlefield so far away?
An engaging story that remembers the Greatest Generation as regular people who rose to the intense challenges of their day, Walking Wounded is filled with both poignancy and humor. A new generation defined by the War on Terror may be surprised to find their own experiences reflected in the lives of Jimmy and friends.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Best yet! May 19, 2009
By Dale C. Cook
"student of life"
This is my brother's best book to date by far! It paints a picture of a different America, an America fighting a war that is popular and seen as just. Radio is king. And amidst that backdrop, the little people (and that's most of us) try to fit their lives.. with amazing success. The characters in "Wounded" are very believable and the author, who has lived there many years now, knows Madison. So few books these days really tell a story; this one does.
Like Coming Home Jul 08, 2011
By Carol A. Buchanan
Walking Wounded has the ring of truth, the kind of truth that resonates in the heart and has nothing to do with being fiction or nonfiction. Billy McGinnity discovers the truth about himself and his origins from a box of old letters and newspaper clippings. As he tells his story, set on the home front during World War II, it becomes a study in courage and choices. During the war, men who did not serve were disdained more than most people now can hardly imagine. To be 4F was to be inferior, not a real man. To be a conscientious objector was the next thing to being a traitor. Yet as the novel proceeds, we learn there are more kinds of courage, and people equally as brave as a soldier, though in a different way.
Just to live their lives requires acts of courage for some people. This novel is about courage, and faith, and perseverance.
I recommend it highly.
AN UNFORGETTABLE STORY Sep 27, 2009
By B. Vroman
"Barbara Fitz Vroman"
There have been endless books about World War II, but rarely on which deals not with the battlefield but with the home front and how the war
affected ordinary people.
Although WALKING WOUNDED is fiction, it has the authenticity of historical reality. The book is full of the progress of the war, but also delivers the joke's, the slang, the celebrities of the time. To read it is to travel back in time and be there.
Jimmy McGinnity is not tall, dark and handsome. He's small, thin and has a gimpy leg that drags when he walks. It's his misfortune to fall in love with Beth Heinke, a knock-out girl, who is so bright and witty she has become a big hit on a radio show called, Breakfast with Betsy. She loses her job and is deeply in need of a friend.
Jimmy becomes that friend but it's hard to be the best friend of a girl you're in love with when you know she's way out of your league.
One of the most touching chapters is set in the favorite bar of Jimmy's alcoholic father who continually embarrasses him. His father has the whole bar singing a ballad about ABDUL, ABDUL EMIR! The son, so often ashamed of this father finally joins in the ballod he heard since childhood, and then tenderly gets his father off to bed. It's a masteful depiction of how love survives even continual abuse.
Does the guy get the girl in the end? I can only say if you are a
woman the ending will probably make you cry.
WALKING WOUNDED is an unforgettable novel and an historiacally
important one.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Humerous creative changes to figures from the past Apr 13, 2010
By Patricia Kramer
It took me awhile to get into this book, but I was well engrossed in it by the end. The story is set in Madison, WI and all the local historical references, both real and changed up a bit, made it fun to read for this Madisonian.
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