This is an epic fiction drenched in the certainty of history, personal experience and fact. Devil's Paintbrush tells the story of a young boy who grows up in a violent and abusive home within the Projects of Brooklyn, Maryland during the 1950s and 1960s. Then as a young man, he once again finds himself thrust in another hostile environment - South Vietnam. Somehow he survives both worlds.
Decades after receiving “The Bronze Star” in combat, Ken Callahan’s long suppressed memories and fractured emotions compel him to enter yet another threatening battlefield to engage a very different enemy – a foe deadlier than any Viet Cong or bird-eating tarantula he ever confronted as a younger man. This new battlefield is the private office of the Veteran Administration’s top PTSD clinician. This new enemy is … himself.
Within the relative safety of the clinician’s office, Ken is reluctantly dragged back in time to unearth deeply buried memories of war.
However, the PTSD professional community is stunned as they quickly discover Ken’s combat experiences were not as lethal as the domestic violence and sexual abuse he endured at the hands of a disturbed older brother and sinfully wicked mother long before he even went to war. In short, Ken Callahan’s PTSD had been deeply entrenched well before he stepped foot on the battlefields of South Vietnam.
“Discovering” the truth about his own past proves to be challenging enough; “accepting” it, however, requires Ken to cross a line from which there is no return. The man who ultimately emerges from this treatment is not the same Bronze Star recipient who reluctantly enters it, nor are those he touches along the way.
Only the essence of a Devil’s Paintbrush is able to provide the caliber of personal resilience and character needed at every juncture of Ken Callahan’s life-long journey.
Readers of this story will be either shocked and disgusted or enlightened and educated. There is no safe place between these two extremes.
