Keeping Faith

In 1998, Frank Schaeffer was a bohemian novelist living in “Volvo driving, higher-education worshipping” Massachusetts with two children graduated from top universities. Then his youngest child, straight out of high school, joined the United States Marine Corps. Written in alternating voices by eighteen-year-old John and his father, Frank, Keeping Faith takes readers in riveting fashion through a family’s experience of the Marine Corps: from being broken down and built back up on Parris Island (and being the parent of a child undergoing that experience), to the growth of both father and son and their separate reevaluations of what it means to serve. From Frank’s realization that among his fellow soccer dads “the very words boot camp’ were pejorative, conjuring up troubled youths at risk’” (“‘But aren’t they all terribly southern?’ asked one parent”) to John’s learning that “the Marine next to you is more important than you are,” Keeping Faith a New York Times bestseller is a fascinating and personal examination of issues of class, duty, and patriotism.
The fact that John is currently serving in the Middle East only adds to the impact of this wonderfully written, timely, and moving human interest story.

Author Biography

Frank Schaeffer is the author of two novels, Saving Grandma and Portofino, the latter of which has sold 100,000 copies in cloth and paper, and been translated into seven languages. Corporal John Schaeffer is currently deployed in the Middle East.