The Last Assignment by Erika Robuck

 My thoughts

I have read and enjoyed several of this author's books. I have also learned quite a bit from each. This one is about a women I had never heard about. I'm very glad this was written. Not just for the story but for the info. How a female was a force to be during several wars. As a photojournalist. And as a strong, albeit, tiny female.

You meet Georgette "Dickey" Meyer Chapelle at the very beginning of this story. She's quite the woman too. You meet her family and quite a few friends. I liked every one of them except her "husband" and I use that term loosely. But Dickey loved him. She took up photography because of him. But he was not a faithful man and Dickely deserved better. Or to be free...

This book takes you from New York City in 1954 to October 1965. You'll learn how Dickey endured each war. Taking pictures of injured and innocent families. How she became a prisoner. How she met some strong leaders. Some of which totally let her down. Lied. Dickey loved her family but didn't have a strong bond with her mother. Seems her mother thought she should remain home and be a wife. Not that that was a bad thing. It was just not what Dickey wanted. 

Dickey worked for several magazines and other places. She had pictures that the government confiscated due to the content. She loved the Marines more than anything and wanted to be one. But that was just not meant to be. Dickey knew how to survive. She went from WW2 through Vietnam photographing wars. She met so many kind and wonderful people. Of course there were some pretty awful ones too. 

This book is kind of repetitive but it explains all of the things Dickey did and went through. You really get an in depth view of her life. Dickey lost some good friends and some family. She handled it as would be expected. I enjoyed this book but did wish it was a tad shorter. I learned about a woman who went after what she wanted and got it. 

Well researched. Well told. I enjoyed the letters and posts from Dickey and others. I enjoyed learning about a strong female back when females were meant to be home having babies and waiting on husbands. I admire what Dickey did. A lot.

Thank you #sourcebookslandmark, @tantormedia, for this ARC.    

About

From bestselling author Erika Robuck comes the perilous and awe-inspiring true story of award-winning photojournalist Dickey Chapelle as she risks everything to show the American people the price of war through the lens of her camera.

Manhattan, 1954.

Since her arrest for disobeying orders and going ashore at Iwo Jima almost a decade earlier, combat correspondent Georgette "Dickey" Chapelle has been unmoored. Her military accreditation revoked, her marriage failing, and her savings dwindling, Dickey jumps at the next opportunity. In the aftermath of a an assignment gone wrong, a flame is lit deep inside Dickey—to survive in order to be the world's witness to war from the front lines.

Never content to report on battles unless her own boots are on the ground, Dickey and her camera journey with American and international soldiers from frozen wastelands to raging seas to luscious jungles, revealing one woman's extraordinary courage and tenacity in the face of discrimination and danger. And it's along the way, in Dickey's desire to save the world, she realizes she might also be saving herself.

At a time when a woman's heroic spirit often gave way to homeland reality, Dickey blazed a trail for the revolutionary hearts inside us all.