Greenleaf Literary Services

Note: This is an actual book proposal (query letter, synopsis, author’s bio, and chapter-by-chapter outline) prepared for a client. The author’s name and book title have been changed.

Click here to download the full proposal (Word document, 12 pages).

Excerpt . . .

Query Letter – Nonfiction

Date

Agent’s Name
Agency Name
Address
City, State ZIP

Dear Agent’s Name:

I lost my son to the Vietnam War. Not because he was killed there. He came back home, but only as a hollowed-out ghost of his former self. As a combat medic in the Central Highlands, he witnessed unbelievable carnage, eventually turning to drugs before returning home with the stigma of a less than honorable discharge. His war became mine.

His story – my story – is not unique. Others like us have been struggling for three decades to shake loose the lingering hangover of America’s longest and most divisive war. Parents, spouses, and children are suffering from Vietnam’s legacy every day. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Agent Orange exposure, suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, profound alienation – the list goes on. The Vietnam vets’ collective burden has become our own.

This is the story of my family, as well as the story of twelve other families whose lives were changed forever by Vietnam. From Sumner, Illinois, to Seattle, Washington, we share one hope in common: that by telling our stories we will somehow transcend our history, finally relegating to the past the agony that was Vietnam.

Vietnam: Families at War has been completed at 86,000 words. I have enclosed a brief synopsis and would be pleased to send you sample chapters or the entire manuscript.

An SASE is enclosed for your reply. Thank you for your consideration.

Synopsis – Nonfiction

Thomas Leach
6425 W. Barnett Drive
Powder Creek, AZ 85311

Phone: (555) 555-7448
Email: tlea@commtel.com

VIETNAM: FAMILIES AT WAR
Synopsis
by Thomas Leach

Anyone who knows a Vietnam vet knows that the war he fought three decades ago still smolders, a recurrent nightmare often more keenly experienced than the present. His odyssey has been well documented in countless books and documentary films. But what of his family’s? What of those who suffer alongside him?

Since Vietnam, we have learned that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – like other fallout from war – is transferable. A son spurns his family. A husband menaces his wife. A father remains inscrutable to his son. And the war keeps on raging. Whether killed, maimed, or psychologically wounded in Vietnam, each vet is no longer the sole possessor of his experiences. They now belong to his loved ones in particular and the community as a whole.

For some of us, such a transference means we have spent the last thirty years or more trying to undo the legacy of a war we can only know secondhand. For others, our lives have been less about damage control and more about emotional detective work. Who is my loved one? What did he see? Why can’t he break free?

Historians, sociologists, and other professional thinkers might be able to study the phenomenon from a safe distance, tweezing the particulars with academic disinterest. But those of us in the midst of this sort of cold-burning hell can only tell our stories. We have no definitions, theories, or constructs – just the agony of someone else’s war foisted upon us. His war has become our own. His pain is ours, acutely felt. And the relationships he cultivates in the community become, by default, ours as well. Alienation. Ostracism. We bear with him the scars of a soldier put out to pasture, no longer needed by the country that asked of him the ultimate sacrifice. His stigma marks us all. His disillusionment encompasses us equally.

Of course, we can’t see the jungle canopy as it snuffs out twilight or the trip flare illuminating the night sky. We can’t hear our enemy passing us on the trail in near silence or napalm canisters tumbling overhead. We don’t know what Agent Orange tastes like when it is breathed on a mist or how socks feel like as they rot between our toes. Few of us have ever known true hunger or thirst or the absolute certainty that our life owns only seconds before death arrives. All we have are phantoms in Plato’s cave, the faraway look of our loved one as he is transported somewhere unimaginable.

Our war, like his now, is fought at home. Internally. We fight the infectious symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. We fight drug addiction and alcoholism. We fight bone marrow cancer and diabetes and Agent Orange’s terminal echo. We fight for proper discharge status, social and economic justice, and our rightful place at the table as heroes of America’s most divisive war. We fight to restore our honor, for a return of our dignity, for the right to dream and hope like any other citizen.

Half the battle, in the end, is perception. Most Vietnam vets, after surviving harrowing adventures in a strange land followed by a rude homecoming in an equally strange land, forgot the war as best they could and went on with the business of living. Family men. Pious men. Contributors all to the Gross National Product. And those still struggling to shake the war loose are no less capable of reemerging whole. They and their families need recognition, understanding, and support. Redemption.

They – we – need someone to listen to our stories. Because the stories, whether triumphant or cataclysmic, a shining light or a grisly portent, are all we’ve got.

Chapter Outline – Nonfiction

Thomas Leach
6425 W. Barnett Drive
Powder Creek, AZ 85311

Phone: (555) 555-7448
Email: tlea@commtel.com

VIETNAM: FAMILIES AT WAR
Chapter Outline
by Thomas Leach

Preface

While attending the funeral of local citizen and friend Marianne Seibert, I realize that her family’s grief is my own, and that of countless others. Marianne lost her son to Vietnam but died never knowing if he really died in that fiery helicopter crash, or if he somehow survived and is still being held prisoner in Vietnam. At her funeral, it slowly dawns on me that the families of vets have been suffering silently for more than thirty years. Who will speak for us? Who will tell our stories?

Part I: A Different Era

Three decades after Vietnam, not much has changed. Soldiers still mix drugs with war. And predictably enough, accidents – like the friendly fire incident in Afghanistan that killed four Canadians and wounded eight others – still happen. Our look back begins with the present.

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