Hello All,
Wanted to take a few minutes and write a note to explain my long absence here. The 2020s have been a wild ride for my family and myself. From the Goat’s Last Run just before the Covid lockdowns in 2020, to now, I wrote or ghost wrote three more books and had Race of Aces come out just as the pandemic struck the United States.
In between the book writing sessions, I went off and played photojournalist again and got myself in all kinds of interesting and somewhat hazardous situations. I photographed some of the early post-George Floyd protests and their aftermath in Portland and Salem, then ended up in the middle of the Santiam Canyon Wildfire in September 2020. Miraculously, the beloved cabin I’ve used since 2009 as a writing spot survived, thanks to a team of smokejumpers who stopped the flames about 100 meters from the cabin complex.
Unfortunately, the devastation to the Santiam Canyon communities was catastrophic. Virtually all of the town of Detroit was destroyed, while Mill City and other small towns suffered terribly as well.
A year later, the fall of Kabul and our precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan caused a four month break in writing. It has seemed that every month has brought unique challenges, including a fatal plane crash that happened about 350 meters from our house.
Pretty sure I’m preaching to the choir here. All of us and our families have faced similar things. The 2020s were destined to be an outlier decade for everyone, I think.
For the last two years I’ve been trying to catch up. At last, I have. Just in time, too, as my 25th book, “Fifty-Three Days on Starvation Island” is due to be released by Hachette on May 14th!
Fifty-Three Days takes a deep dive into the human cost of America’s first offensive of WWII, as seen through the eyes of the first two Marine aviation squadrons to join the fight. There at Guadalcanal in August 1942, less than fifty mostly-half-trained American aviators stood against the best and most veteran Japanese air units of the Pacific War. For fifty-three days, these men flew and fought nearly every day, while at night they endured shellings, naval bombardments, bombings, sniper fire, and infiltration attacks, all while eating starvation-level rations. The book centers on three key leaders–John L. Smith, Marion Carl and Dick Mangrum, who held these squadrons together through the most difficult days ever experienced by Marine aviation.
In the weeks and months to come, I’ll be writing here again and responding to the many kind emails I’ve received while I’ve been focused elsewhere. In short order, expect a story on one of the most unusual military sites in Oregon, a place that has generated countless urban legends since its construction during the height of the Cold War.
Anyway, wanted to check in and report that now that we’re over the hump, I’ll be devoting time here again at last. Stay tuned for some fun stuff ahead!
John R. Bruning
This summer has been an odd one for me. My son fell gravely ill earlier in the year and missed five months of school. He’s 100% healthy now and doing great, but for awhile, he was unable to walk or even sit up. As the family rallied around him, my writing deadlines became a casualty of the emergency. From April on, when Ed was finally back on his feet and at school (he finished the year with a 4.0 btw!), I went back to work on the next book. And then, I was asked to help out on another project related to U.S. naval aviation during the Vietnam Era. I was given sixty days to work through that. All this meant pretty much no summer for me. However, I did sneak off to Madras with Ed at the end of August to capture some of the warbirds at the Airshow of the Cascades. It is a gem of an airshow, with beautifully restored WWII aircraft from the Erickson Collection as the show’s centerpiece. It was a great father-son trip that gave us a both a boost in the final days before he started his senior year in high school, and I return to my next WWII project.
The American Warrior 