Saving Private Erick - Sunwall Discusses Unseen Wounds of War in New Novel


GAINESVILLE, Fla., April 11, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- War wounds all it touches with its fiery fingers. If the bullets and bombs don't destroy, the memory of the battlefield will. Like an amputee, the victim has the scars of war with him, but these wounds are in the mind. The Keys to Nine-West: Marching as to War (now available through 1stBooks Library) by James Sunwall details the excruciating effects war has on the human psyche.

It is 1952, and the images of Eisenhower and Nixon flicker continuously on the hospital ward TV. Erick, a former combat medic, works as an aide on the locked ward of mental hospital during the Korean War. All of his medical training seems useless in the face of such mental wounds, and the unpredictable violence of the patients keeps him on alert. Sometimes he wishes they were physically sick because then he could help, but all he can do is hold the keys to their rooms.

Erick, surrounded by a slew of nurses that only recall memories, begins to suffer his own mental anguish. The keys soon come to symbolize the only separation between him and the mentally wounded patients he keeps locked away. Through the images on TV and the nurse that reminds him of his wife lost to the madness of war, Erick begins a downward spiral into neurosis and paranoia that leads to the dramatic climax.

Historically accurate, Keys details both the times through the florescent TV screen and the methods used to control and contain patients before the era of sedatives and drugs. The Keys to Nine-West is a testament to a dying era that the world must never forget.

James Sunwall was in an Army medical collecting company in the Pacific during WWII. Upon his return, he continued his education, while working as an aide in veteran hospitals in West Haven and Iowa City. He was a member of the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa while working on his Ph.D. He has taught writing and literature at Colgate University, and currently at the University of Florida where he is an emeritus professor. Author of over fifty poems, short stories and plays, The Keys to Nine-West is his first novel.

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