Gail Hosking Gilberg's father was a hero, a valiant soldier decorated posthumously with the Medal of Honor, a man who served his country throughout his entire adult life. But Charles Hosking was a mystery to his daughter. He was killed in Vietnam a week after her seventeenth birthday. She buried the war, the protests, the medal, and her military upbringing along with her father, so much so that she felt cut off from herself. It took more than twenty years for her to recognize the stirrings of a father and a daughter not yet at peace.
Gilberg began a journey—two journeys really—to find out who her father was and in the process to find herself. She explored her buried rage, shame, and silence, and examined how war had shaped her life. In studying the photo albums that her father had left behind, Gilberg found that the photographs demanded that she give voice to her feelings, then release her silent words, words that had no meaning in war for her father yet had all the meaning in the world for her. The result was an epiphany. The photographs became the roads she took in and out of war, and her words brought her father home. Snake's Daughter reveals the crossroads where a soldier father's life and a daughter's life connect.
Snake's Daughter is an arresting and anguished narrative that gives voice to an experience Gail Hosking Gilberg shares with thousands of Americans, including military “brats” whose parents served their country and often gave their lives in the process.
“Destiny assigns the daughters of fallen soldiers the most painful duty, to transform the eternally accumulating sorrows of war into a healing sense of peace, recovery, and reunion. After these many years of America's half-hearted reconciliations, public and private, Gail Gilberg closes the circle on the Vietnam era and our fragmented culture's long convalescence, providing in once and for all with terminal punctuation. I can't imagine any reader not being profoundly moved by Snake's Daughter.”—Bob Shacochis
“For one born into one army family and married into another, Gail Hosking Gilberg's reminders of turbulent and stressful times as well as beloved locations come through vividly and poignantly. She brought two fascinating people into our lives: Sergeant Snake Hosking and his daughter Gail. They will both remain with the reader long after the book has been finished.”—Joanne Holbrook Patton
“Gilberg's eye for detail, her patient and informed study of her father's photographs, reward the reader, allowing him or her to enter into the most personal of Gilberg's musings and thereby to feel like a participant, not an eavesdropper. The fundamental damage done to Gilberg's life was her father's death in 1967; he died a hero, but in many ways was no such thing to his wife and daughters. A mother now herself, Gilberg wrestles with the implications of her father's choice: of country over family, duty over responsibility. What makes Snake's Daughter so worthwhile is the degree to which Gilberg focuses on the largest possible questions, spinning out from her cocoon of personal drama to include not only all war babies but all who have suffered from a missing parent, regardless of circumstances…This is artfully and indelibly written, and in it are posed the fundamental questions of Snake's Daughter. This is not a book merely about Vietnam or a Vietnam daughter; this is a testament to how loss permeates the fabric of everyday living, tattooing us with questions we can never rub off…a strong and thoughtful journey into the power of what we remember, and what we need to remember.”—Joe Bonomo, Georgia Review
Contents
Foreword by Albert E. Stone
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Dreams
Luella
1925
Chas Hosking Jr., Brooklyn, New York
The Generations
Sailor on a Park Bench, Date Unknown
A Soldier’s Album
On Leave with George Martino from Newark, New Jersey
Southern France, 1944
Mother’s Day, 1944
Norman, 1945
Physical Training
June 30, 1948, Textile Hall, Columbus, Georgia
Love and Marriage
Company F, 503rd AIR, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, 1951
Into Focus
Roots and Vines
June 2, 1952, Smoke Bomb Hill, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Gail and I
Betty Ann, September 1953, Fort Bragg
At Captain Smith’s
April 8, 1954, Berchtesgaden
Summer 1954, Benediktbeuern
Intelligence and Language School, Oberammergau
Identical Dresses Lined Up for the Camera
February 1955, Dachau, behind the Crematorium
Italy, 1955
Christmas 1956, Wasson, Illinois
Flint Kaserne
Aunt Lorraine
Group Promotions
55 New Street
Maneuvers and War
The Collection
Two-Man-Carry Rappel
Sergeant Higgenbotham, Top Dog
In Disguise
Memory’s Pull
July 1961, Bad Tolz
October 1961, Champs-Elysees
December 1963, on the Way to Vietnam
On Guard
Loc Ninh Photographic Collage, 1964
Another Hitch
Attack on a Village, Phuoc Long Province, March 1965
July 13, 1965, Escape from the Vietcong
A Near Miss
August 1965, Ten-Minute Break
Dream
Instructing at the Sand Table, Camp Minh Thanh
Questions
Training
Underneath the Map—Rooms of War and Perpetual Dusk
Danger
A Form
December 1965, Hugh O’Brien, RVN
Late-Night Photographs
Beating the Drum
Echo Lake
Bien Hoa
Friends
Future Past
The Sacrament of Memory and Praise
Last Mission
Tet Celebration
Midnight Memorial Service
March 21
CBS/Newsradio 88, May 23, 1969
May 1971, Hosking Field House Dedication
Metis
The Return
Sons and Daughters
Conversation with a Blind Stranger Who Shines
Light on the Forgotten
A Bridge
Untitled
Gift of a Liberated Village
Heaven’s Dance Floor
Anonymous
Indochine
Dispatches
May 12, 1995
Voice
The Ultimate Mask
Sacrifice
Dream
An Attempted Ending
To My Father
Bibliography
