All during January there will be a special sale of Buy 2 Books Get 1 Free on Action/Detective/Mystery and Christian Fiction at Hedgehog INK! Bookstore located at 16 S. Main.

The store showcases book signings featuring local authors.

On January 28, Mary Barbara McKay will introduce her book, Writings from Vietnam,  at 1:30 p.m. at the store.

“We are excited to have her launch her book and book signing at Hedgehog.INK!,” store owner Jan Hedges said.

McKay has lived in neighboring Linn County since 1996, when she and husband, Rod, bought 40 acres of Kansas farm ground and built a country home. They moved from Sacramento, California, where she had been a high school English and art teacher and then nurse and he, a commuter airline pilot.

First Book

McKay’s first book, The Good Horses: How Horses Taught Me God’s Plan for My Life tells the story of their move to the country and the important role horses played in making the transition from city woman to country woman pleasant, she said.

“Horses made my new life interesting, enjoyable, educational,” she said. “Country life brought me closer to God through the horses and our care of them and the peaceful natural world around us.”

“My first book was published in 2019 and is also available at Hedgehog Ink Bookstore,” she said. “It has my own photographs and paintings, and some favorite poems and Scripture quotations. I love painting, drawing and photography and also love writing from my own experience.”

Second Book

“The second book, Writings from Vietnam, was completed in November 2022,” she said. It is a compilation of my husband’s letters to me from his time in Vietnam, plus a short journal he kept for three months, and nine pages he wrote of what happened on ‘a terrible day,’ but never sent to anyone.”

Rod, survived serving in the Vietnam War, and died of a heart attack in 2018.

She had kept all his letters from his tour of Vietnam and wrote the book as a tribute to him, she said.  “He very rarely talked about Vietnam, and then only a sentence or two.”

“Rod has an almost intellectual view of the war, though he is living through very dismal times (in the book)” she said.  “I insert paragraphs from his time in Army Basic Training and Advanced Infantry Training within the war letters to show the differences and parallels between the Army at war and the stateside Army. My husband was a radio telephone operator, which means he carried the radio for his commanding officer.”

“He was in Vietnam for 11 months,” McKay said. “In April 1970 the U.S. was pulling back forces and he was discharged a month early. His letters show life in the field–sleeping in the mud, constantly watching for enemy, losing men he just met.”

“His last five months were spent as company clerk at a fire support base,” she said. “He wrote the letters home to families who’d lost a husband or a spouse. He has deep insights and always kept his faith. God always came first in his life.”

“This is a short book, it is only 114 pages, and it includes a few photographs and an addendum which is a journal he kept for three months from May 3 to August 12, 1969, his first three months in Vietnam,” she said.

Her husband of nearly 47 years was a thoughtful, principled man and has a message for everyone who reads the book, she said. “This book is a tribute to him with a message I believe will resonate with readers.”

“Merl Humphrey Photography (a local Fort Scott business) used two photographs to make the composite picture for the cover,” she said. “The color picture I took of Rod at the Vietnam War Memorial in 1994;  the black and white picture of men in Vietnam placed within the wall was among Rod’s things.”

February’s Offers At Hedgehog INK!

Additionally coming up at Hedgehog INK! in February  is Buy 2 Get 1 Free on Romance books.

Feb. 4 – Children’s Story Time, story and activity
Feb. 10-11 Love Local Chocolate Crawl – All Chocolates 25% off
Feb. 25? – Author Talk / Book Talk – Leon Perry