gJ Maresca  

ALWAYS REACHING: Turbulent Seas > Tranquil Bays

War should end when you come home, but for some, the shooting never ends.

In the late 1960s, a young Naval Aviator returns from the unforgiving skies over Vietnam, where every mission carried the risk that someone might never come home. Combat, loss, and a near-fatal encounter with enemy fire leave scars that cannot be abandoned aboard the carrier. He comes home longing for something he has almost forgotten—a normal life.

Waiting for him is Helen, the woman he was forced to leave behind. Helen becomes far more than the love of his life; she becomes the safe harbor that guides him away from the memories of war and toward a future he once believed impossible.

Book Two of The Intrepid Seeker Series.

Cook

Navy Pilot

Engineer

About the Author

Cook. Navy pilot. Engineer. Chef. Writer. Not necessarily in that order.

I grew up in Brooklyn, and I’ve been cooking for as long as I can remember. My grandparents were chefs and bakers from Naples — so the kitchen was just where life happened. I began working in my uncle’s Italian restaurants, started with the unglamorous stuff, and eventually worked my way up to actually cooking. Then moved on, to working in pizzerias. I loved it. I figured that was my path.

Then science got in the way. I had strong grades and a genuine passion for engineering, but paying for college was another story. The only full four-year grant I could find was from the U.S. Navy’s NROTC program. I took it. Four years of college, then four years of active duty as a commissioned officer. Simple enough — until I discovered flying.

During a summer reserve stint, I got accepted into the elite Naval Aviator Training Program. I was going to be a fighter pilot. I felt it in my chest — the certainty of it, the rightness. Nothing, I told myself, could possibly derail this.

What followed was a life I couldn’t have invented: eight years active duty, three in the reserves, two years in naval aviation training earning my gold wings, three years in Vietnam doing my best not to earn the other kind. If that wasn’t enough, I re-enlisted later in life, for four more years as a technical consultant. Apparently, I don’t take hints easily.

After I finally separated, I spent years in the computer industry working for top military contractors — good work, interesting problems. But cooking never really left me. When I retired, I went to Italy and enrolled at the Italian Culinary Institute. I came home a restaurateur, a personal chef, and a cooking instructor. It felt like coming full circle.

Then I started writing. First two cookbooks — one on lifestyle-based eating, one entirely devoted to pizza, which I’ve enjoyed making for over 50 years. After that I moved into fiction and memoir: novels, a mystery, and a three-book series about growing up and flying jets in the golden age of naval aviation. There’s another one coming — a sci-fi mystery set in Egypt, underneath the Sphinx. I’m not sure I know how to stop now.

I love telling my stories to all who want to listen…

Author’s Note

Always Reaching: Turbulent Seas > Tranquil Bays is the second book in the Intrepid Seeker Series, continuing the story of a young man who believed that reaching for the next challenge was simply who he was.

Much of this book takes place during a turbulent era for both myself and my country. As a young Naval Aviator flying the F-4 Phantom during the Vietnam War, I have drawn on my memories and historical records to keep the technical and operational details as accurate as possible.

Memory, however, is not a flight recorder.

Dialogue has been reconstructed from the expressions that stayed with me for sixty years and the essence of what was said. While I cannot claim every word is exact, I have fought to preserve the truth of those conversations and the people involved.

The men I flew with were real. The dangers were real. So were the friendships, the losses, the fear, the laughter, and the strange ability young men have to climb into a fighter aircraft the next morning and do it all over again.

This is not a history of the Vietnam War—others are better qualified for that task. This is simply my story of living through a small part of it: what I saw, what I experienced, and what I carried home.

But Turbulent Seas, Tranquil Bays is also about the act of coming home.

I once believed my greatest challenges would be found in a cockpit or over hostile territory. I eventually discovered that life had other plans. Surviving the war was one thing; learning how to leave it behind was another.

And then there was Helen. Life has a way of bringing the right person into your world exactly when you need them—and occasionally, it grants the miracle of a second chance with someone you loved and believed was gone.

Looking back, I understand something the young man in these pages could not: reaching is not always about going higher, farther, or faster. Sometimes it is about recognizing what you have finally found—and having the sense to hold on to it.

This is the story as I remember it. It is the second step in a longer journey

Books

Always… just a dream away from a story

  • E-mail: gjmaresca@yahoo.com
  • Katy, Texas, USA