Angels Unknown:  A Story of Healing After Vietnam
by Lynda Twyman Paffrath

Everyone Reads The Same Book 

Discussion topics and ideas as a guide for reading 
 (Quotes are reflections  by Jim Bird)

1.  Readings from Angels Unknown:

"Early on, she captures the considerably different attitude of the “pre-Viet Nam” youth toward relationships, country and obligation generally—an innocence, a more hopeful generation."

2.  Book Cover 

 "The development and nurturing of the baby boom’s acceptance of the Cold War is revealed in an admiring portrait of her father as a defender of the American democracy in the 50”s—and that admiration is easily transferred to Jim as she searches for love in the 60”s.  She finds a hero." 
(see pages 321-322) A letter written by Brian Currie of her Lynda's father when he was a commander at MHAFB of B-47 squad)

3.  Women's Rights
"The ironies darken then as she merges her United stewardess career, and it emphasis on keeping up appearances, with the sudden, nearly unbearable reality of losing Jim—coolly communicated in telegrams."  (see pages 77-111)

4.   MHHS then and today
"She’s wise and gentle enough to find the beauty in a place like Mtn. Home."
(See Chapter on Mountain Home:  

5.  Vietnam Connections
"Her introduction of actual war correspondence and crisp descriptions of fighter sorties and dawning’s manage to morph that hero-worship into the nagging uncertainty that become America’s entanglement with Viet Nam."

Lynda writes:  In April of 1967, I visited Jim at Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona. One night Jim lit candles placed around his living room and then turned off all the lights. He read me his favorite poems, and one in particular -- "Birches" by Robert Frost -- made me think of Vietnam and what Jim was about to experience.  I quote:

"It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
                           Not to Return. Earth's the right place for love:
                                  I don't know where it's likely to go better."

 

6.  Vietnam Conclusions
"In every chapter, she lets the voices of others come through so the reader can try to hear something of his own voice in them and, from them, examine the nation, as a whole, trying to emerge from a shared agony."  (In an e-mail Lynda wrote: A passage that describes how both of us felt about the war, I'd use the one starting on page 323 and ending on page 326.  On page 323, start with the 2nd paragraph and continue through the 1st passage on page 326.)

7. Lynda Paffrath's personal journey
"  It all blossoms with the quirky, honestly told take of the winding road to new love and matrimony." 

8. Bonnie's Story
"The correspondence throughout the book, especially later on with Bonnie, exposes an intense alchemy, a mysterious and perpetual transformation of pain into creation."

9.  The Title: Angels Unknown
 Randy Bailey offered the title of the book.  How does she make the titile hers, which she has done so well.

 Angels Unknown is a Navy Air Traffic Control term, which directly translates to "altitude unknown". It is phrase used to give the pilot more information of advancing aircraft and their location. 

  Reflections on the readings by Jim Bird

Angels Unknown

 MHHS Library Home Page