The Big Inch by Kimberly Fish (Audio Book Tour)

Why Veterans Day is Significant to this Book Blog Tour

By Kimberly Fish

Veteran’s Day is one of those national remembrances where we reflect on the courage to perform selfless service and wonder whether we could do the same under a similar situation. Our country seems so fractured and polarized that the idea of people doing anything sacrificial for a stranger is almost inconceivable. Reading or listening to stories that honor that bravery is like ingesting medicine for the soul.

I believe readers are fascinated by fiction set during World War II because during that era of foreign troubles and frightening tools of mass destruction, ordinary people seemed to put down their swords of personal gain to do something good for the greater good. From soldiers drafted to fight in a country they’d never seen, to children recycling their bicycle tires, it was a period of time that we, in 2018, view with more than just nostalgia—it’s almost as if the war years were our own sort of Camelot. That halcyon glow is only because we were on the winning side. I perish to think what our culture would be facing had we lost. 

I wrote the novel, The Big Inch, to tell a community something big from their own local story—a Texas history lesson with sass and romance. But in a large part, it was to honor the patriotic men and women who heard the tragedy of war on the Continent and committed to jumping in. We’re getting farther removed from that collective memory, and it’s our responsibility to revisit those times. My writing this novel was like leaving a stone on an altar to those veterans (both active duty and those who assumed unusual methods to serve their country—like those in the Office of Strategic Services). And I like to think that folks who choose to read or listen to those stories are touching that altar too. We haven’t forgotten the bravery or the sacrifices. We know the freedoms we have, the liberty we enjoy, are because courageous people did crazy big things out of love for humanity. And, we tell their stories.