Never Leave Your Dead
eBook - ePub

Never Leave Your Dead

A True Story of War Trauma, Murder, and Madness

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Never Leave Your Dead

A True Story of War Trauma, Murder, and Madness

About this book

In March of 1953, Donald Watkins, a former Marine who served in China during the Japanese invasion of 1937, murdered his wife and mother-in-law. After serving twenty-two years in Farview State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, he was released and eventually married again. A decade later, Donald may or may not have been the cause of his second wife's death, as well.

Author Diane Cameron uncovers the true story of her stepfather, Donald Watkins. Was he a traumatized veteran? A victim of abuse in the mental-health system? Was he a criminal? Mentally ill? Or just eccentric?

As she unravels this mystery, Cameron finds healing and understanding with her own struggles and history of family abuse. She discovers an unlikely collection of role models in the community of the China Marines, as they were known. Together, they help put the pieces of shared war experience in perspective and resolve the more complex issue of understanding trauma itself.

With insights drawn from diverse experts such as Thomas Szasz and Bessel van der Kolk, Cameron unlocks the connection between the experience of veterans of past wars and those who deal with the war trauma today.

Diane Cameron is an award-winning columnist. An excerpt from Never Leave Your Dead was first published in the Bellevue Literary Review and was nominated for a 2006 Pushcart Prize.

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Yes, you can access Never Leave Your Dead by Diane Cameron in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Social Science Biographies. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Table of Contents
  6. Foreword
  7. Preface
  8. Prologue: The Murder—March 7, 1953
  9. Chapter One: My Mother’s Donald
  10. Chapter Two: Getting to Know Donald
  11. Chapter Three: Out of Order
  12. Chapter Four: For God and Country
  13. Chapter Five: Missing History: Donald’s Past Has a Past
  14. Chapter Six: Nuts for the Nation: St. Elizabeths Hospital
  15. Chapter Seven: Semper Fi: There’s No Purple Heart for Falling Apart
  16. Chapter Eight: They Brought Home More Than Souvenirs
  17. Chapter Nine: When My Mother Told Me
  18. Chapter Ten: Cold Storage: Farview State Hospital
  19. Chapter Eleven: Unveiling the Myth of Thomas Szasz
  20. Chapter Twelve: Getting Help and Getting Home Again
  21. Chapter Thirteen: Donald Crosses the Line
  22. Chapter Fourteen: There Are So Many Donalds
  23. Chapter Fifteen: Still Crazy After All These Years
  24. Chapter Sixteen: Iambic Pentameter and the Meter of War
  25. Chapter Seventeen: Never Leave Your Dead
  26. Acknowledgments and Thanks
  27. The Symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
  28. Resources for Veterans and Their Families and Friends