Featured Interview With Ed Marohn
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I grew up in Boise, Idaho, although I was born in Rothenburg, Germany, in a Displaced Persons camp operated under the US Army. I was born the 24th US Army Field Hospital stationed there. My mother was a DP, a freed Nazi slave laborer who had been incarcerated in a concentration camp from 1942-45.
After graduating from the University of Idaho in 1968 and I was commissioned an officer in the US Army. After Airborne and Ranger training, I served with the 25th Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne (Airmobile) Division in the Vietnam War, where I commanded a combat unit. My awards included three Bronze Stars, one Air Medal, two Army Commendation Medals, one US Army Vietnam Campaign Medal with two campaigns, the South Vietnamese Campaign Medal, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Palm. I served in Germany and also Holland (Dutch language trained by the US State Department) and was the Assistant Professor of Military History at the University of Nevada, Reno. At U of N, I earned my MA in Counseling (psychology). After headhunters recruited me I became an executive with Continental AG and Michelin Tire Corporation, both International Fortune 500 companies.
After retirement from the corporate world to Idaho Falls, Idaho, in 2008, I volunteered as a VA facilitator for military veterans with PTSD because of my combat experience in the Vietnam War. Additionally, I served as a Board Member, then eventually Vice Chairman, of the Idaho Humanities Council (National Endowment for the Humanities). Concurrently I sat as Board Member of the Idaho Falls City Club. In 2014 I got elected to a four-year term to the Idaho Falls City Council. I wrote as a Local Columnist for the Idaho Falls Post Register and have had my fiction and non-fiction published in multiple magazines.
With my wife Cathie, we have traveled extensively to include Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Panama, Germany, Austria, and Hungary. The most significant trip was my return to Vietnam some thirty years after the war, where my novel, Legacy of War, began. It was published in July 2019
I am currently writing a sequel novel.
I grew up with dogs and cats but no longer have pets.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
My fascination with books started early in grade school, The public library enticed me to spend numerous hours searching for interesting reads.
The effective period for my writing began in college and started to flourish once I graduated and became an officer in the US Army. I was still on active duty when I wrote my thesis for my Master’s degree in 1975. My first magazine article was published at the same time: a piece about brainwashing. That first check for writing hooked me. I have been scribing ever since.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Some of my favorite authors are John Updike, Norman Mailer, Stephen King, Jon Krakauer, William Manchester, Joseph Conrad, and Fredrick Logevall to name a few.
I enjoy both nonfiction ( history, political science, philosophy, economics) and fiction (various genre: mystery, crime, historical, action-adventure, thriller, etc.)
Good books and good authors help me to push my writing, to entice the readers. And in the end, my characters inspire me; they set the tone, they set the timeline, and they create the numerous subplots.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Legacy of War is an action-adventure novel immersed in a mystery dealing with revenge. A PTSD patient triggers Psychologist John Moore’s traumatic memories of the Vietnam War. Moore, the protagonist, is compelled to return to modern-day Vietnam, confronting his past war demons: the killing fields, corrupt South Vietnamese Army officers, and the CIA’s Phoenix Program. Again in the decaying jungles, he fights to keep his ethics and moral high ground, while also struggling over his wife’s death from cancer.
The novel took ten years to write, triggered by my trip back to Vietnam in 2009.
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