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Paul K. McDevitt

Born: 1947 in New Orleans, LA
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: McDevitt attended Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, from 1965 - 1969 before earning his PhD. (Economics) at Tulane University in 1974. He taught at the University of Illinois Springfield from 1983 until his retirement in 2009. He currently resides in Springfield, Illinois. From 2009 - 2015 Paul researched, wrote, and published All Came Home; It is a narrative non-fictional account of his father’s WWII experiences based on letters that his Dad wrote home from the Pacific.

Biography: Paul K. McDevitt is a retired, university-level educator who enjoyed teaching and researching for 36 years. He’s happily married with two successful children. He enjoys reading, writing, researching, and hiking in the Colorado Mountains.After McDevitt’s family found a box containing letters his Dad wrote home from the Pacific in WWII, Paul spent five years researching his Father’s story and writing a book entitled All Came Home. He now enjoys delivering presentations sharing his Dad’s story and that of a generation of American heroes.


Awards:
  • -- Finalist, USA Great Book Awards, Narrative Non-Fiction, 2016
  • -- Honorable Mention, Florida Book Festival, Biography, 2016
  • -- Honorable Mention, Great Midwest Book Festival, Non-Fiction, 2015

Primary Literary Genre(s): Non-Fiction

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Email: mcdevitt.paul@uis.edu
Website: http://www.allcamehome.com
Paul K. McDevitt on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=paul+k.+mcdevitt


Selected Titles

All came home
ISBN: 9780986341007 OCLC: 915085926

All Came Home is a true story of junior reserve officer Joe McDevitt during WWII, as told through letters mailed home to his family. This is a quintessential American story about a youngster of German and Irish ancestry striving to achieve the American dream. Then comes WWII, and Joe postpones his driving personal ambition in order to enlist in the Navy. He joins the Pacific Amphibious Forces where men wage war on the open water in small boats. Could the Navy really make a warrior out of him ... someone who thinks of nothing else but the sea and the war? A romance flourishes, and, like many of his peers, Joe must choose: marry now, and leave a young war bride behind, or wait to wed his true love when, and if, he returns? At war, he endures one bloody assault after another: ground-shaking bombardments, thundering artillery and mortar barrages, and the conviction that chance alone determines who lives and who dies.

 

 

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