2024 IBPA Gold Ben Franklin Award Winner - 2024 Foreword Review INDIES Silver Award Winner - NextGen INDIE Award Finalist
Drafted tells the story of Henry Morgan Miller's year in Vietnam at the invitation of Lyndon B. Johnson. It is the story of a meat-cutter-wannabe commercial airline pilot-whose life was rudely interrupted by being inducted into a war that he considered someone else's battle for a lost cause. It's a story that could describe many of the almost 300,000 men drafted in 1968 along with Morgan, or, for that matter, the 1.85 million drafted between 1964-73. It is the story of your brother, your son, your friend-some who came home safe and sound, and others who perished, or were no longer whole.
In his book, Morgan also exposes a major mechanical issue with Vietnam-era Cobra helicopters; so serious that had they been Ford cars they would have been subject to a major recall. He suggests that Cobra helicopter pilots were guinea-pigs for aircraft plagued with serious, not to mention deadly, hydraulic problems.
Drafted is for readers who want to experience what it was like, on a day-to-day basis, to go through basic training, learn to fly gunships, and then be shipped out to the Vietnam war zone. What it's like to be shot at and shot down. To serve your country honorably, while fighting a war you don't believe in, only to return and be ostracized by a misguided faction of the general public.
Miller, Morgan: - Morgan Miller is a military veteran and retired liquor store owner from San Diego, California. He lives with his wife, Ginger, a retired nurse, in the serene desert community of Borrego Springs. In 2002, to escape the scorching summer heat, they drove their motorhome to Alaska. It was the first of many annual road trips crisscrossing America. During these leisurely cross-country vacations, Morgan listened to his much younger self recounting details of his year in Vietnam on a collection of fifty-two vintage Craig Reel-to-Reel tapes. Over several years, Morgan transcribed his audio letters to Ginger, containing the story of his wartime combat experiences, into a draft manuscript.A decade later, with Ginger's support, a memoir took shape. However, the rigors of getting it ready for publication meant the draft manuscript languished in the backwater of his computer until 2022, when Ginger once again encouraged him to dust it off and find a professional to help take the promising memoir to the next level.Typing "ghostwriter" into Google, thousands of results immediately appeared. However, one name stood out from the masses: an experienced ghostwriter living in Canada. It only took one phone call for a bond to form between the two men. As the co-author of an award-winning military memoir, Fire from the Sky: A Diary Over Japan, this writer possessed the perfect qualifications to skillfully transform Morgan's factual yet mundane narrative into an exhilarating and gripping memoir.
