A Journal for Jordan (Movie Tie-In)

One


Dear Jordan,

If you are reading this book, it means that we got through the sorrowful years, somehow, and that you are old enough to understand all that I am about to tell you.

You are just ten months old now, but I am writing this for the young man you will be. By then, you will know that your father was a highly decorated soldier who was killed in combat in October 2006, when a bomb exploded beneath his armored vehicle in Iraq. You were six months old.

You will know that he left a journal for you, more than two hundred pages long, which he handwrote in neat block letters in that hot, terrifying place. What I want to tell you is how the journal came to be and what it leaves unsaid about your father and our abiding love.

Before he kissed my swollen stomach and left for the war in December 2005, your father, U.S. Army First Sergeant Charles Monroe King, had been preparing for the promise of your new life and for the possible end of his own. Even before he boarded that plane headed for danger, I worried that he would be killed. So I gave him a journal. I hoped he would write a few messages, perhaps some words of encouragement to you, though you were not yet born, in case he died before you knew each other.

We did a lot to prepare for the possibility that your father would miss out on your life, including finding out if you were a boy or a girl before he left; he was thrilled to have an image of you in his mind and kept your sonogram pictures in a pocket in his uniform the whole time he was in Iraq.

And then there was the journal. Writing it would be a way for your dad to help guide you through life if he did not make it home to us. He wanted you to know to pick up the check on a date, to take plenty of pictures on vacations, to have a strong work ethic, and to pay your bills on time. He wanted to tell you how to deal with disappointment, to understand the difference between love and lust, to remember to get on your knees and pray

Dana Canedy is the senior vice president and publisher of Simon & Schuster. Previously, she was the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes and a senior editor at The New York Times, where she was a journalist for more than twenty years. In 2001, she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for How Race Is Lived in America. Raised near Fort Knox, Kentucky, she lives in New York City with her son, Jordan.

This book is a gift, and not only to Jordan. USA Today

Canedy s talent at evoking character makes the account of King s life and death not simply a story about the injustice of war, but a project in resurrection. Canedy allows King to come alive for her son and, to our benefit, for us. . . . Gripping . . . important. The New York Times Book Review

It s impossible not to be affected by her story. Entertainment Weekly

At once inspiring and ineffably sad . . . Canedy captures the unique magnificence of the man she loved in a way that brings the beginnings of an understanding to the losses that other families bear. The Denver Post

Gut-wrenching . . . Canedy writes with the objective eye of a hard-line reporter yet manages to convey the complexities of the love between her and her fiance as well as the deep loss she feels in his absence. It s impossible to imagine what her pain is like, but she does a beautiful job of allowing us to come close. The Washington Post

Canedy s memoir speaks to military families everywhere. . . . By openly and honestly revealing her side of their highly emotional story as well, by detailing the effects of his death on her and subsequent interactions with government brass about burial and benefits, for example . . . she gives the project a greater significance, making it especially relevant for and meaningful to countless others in similar situations. San Francisco Chronicle

Heartfelt . . . Canedy used her skills as a reporter to dig beneath the official story of King s death. . . . These investigative passages are gripping. . . . King died a hero s death, but Canedy s embrace of life is a kind of heroism, too. The Plain Dealer

Powerful . . . Not all great love stories are ignited by the lightning bolt of love at first glance; this humbler I m-going-to-talk-myself-into-this-good-man version is believable and real. . . . A Journal for Jordan is