For the Holidays, “Letters to Loretta from the Radio Shack, A True WWII Teenage Love Story”

CHICAGO - Nov. 18, 2014 - PRLog -- “Letters to Loretta from the Radio Shack, A True WWII Teenage Love Story,” is the true dramatic tale of two teens during the final climatic years of WWII, 1943-1945. The book, which was released on Veteran’s Day, is now available in paperback or Kindle edition at Amazon.com and as an e-book at ibookstore.com, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Kobo, Copia, Goodreads, Ciando, Scribd and Oyster.

“Letters to Loretta from the Radio Shack,” can also be ordered at the author’s website: www.LauraLynnAshworth.com. Ten percent of the author’s proceeds will benefit the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and United Service Organization (USO).

“Letters to Loretta from the Radio Shack,” contains 170 letters between Sal, a young radio man deciphering Morse code out of the Navy’s radio shack on a minesweeper in the Pacific and Loretta, 15, who is from his neighborhood in Chicago. She lives with aunts and her widowed father, while holding day jobs and enjoying Chicago’s social life with friends and family. The two adolescents discuss with humor and candor politics, their families, friends, life back home, their relationship, music and the war including Sal’s real-time descriptions of D-Day in the Pacific and the Battle of Okinawa.

Excerpts from the book, December 24 and 25, 1944:

“I have been listening to the records up until ten o'clock, but they 'blew' the lights out just now so I came up to the radio shack to finish this letter. Well, we only have about ten good records left and that isn't very much so something (I think) should be done about it immediately. 'Boogie-Woogie,' 'My Blue Heaven' and 'Perido' by the 'Duke' (Ellington) are my favorites amongst the ten. I still get my heart all aflutter though whenever I hear 'Taking a Chance on Love' by B.G. (Benny Goodman) and 'It Seems To Me That I've Heard That Song Before' by 'Able' James. My favorite amongst popular songs is 'I Dream Of You' and you can say that again, Honey, and when I'm awake then I just think of you,” Sal, on the USS Signet at Pearl Harbor, December 24, 1944.

“It snowed again last night and was it 'nice' outside. I was going to go to 12:00 Mass last night but someone (could it be me?) changed their mind, but however, we didn't get there. Boy! Was it crowded on the streets about 12:30-1:00 o’clock. You'd think it was 8:00 a.m. at night, everybody was singing 'kibitzing' around, throwing snowballs, and last but not least, the mistletoe,” Loretta, Douglas Park, Chicago, December 25, 1944.

Letters to Loretta from the Radio Shack lets readers experience World War II, both in battle and on the home front, through the eyes of adolescents in a way that Hollywood movies have never portrayed. The end of the book takes a few unexpected turns that readers will not foresee.

Laura Lynn Ashworth is an award-winning writer and political cartoonist. She currently lives and works in a northwest suburb of Chicago. Information on her and her book can be found on Facebook.