Let Me Tell A Story: A Mix of Short Fiction and Memoir

Let Me Tell A Story is quite a departure from the military crime fiction Betit has published in the past. Written in the same tight but detailed style characteristic of his earlier books, this collection is a mix of short fiction and memoir, first-person stories that take place over a period of nearly 60 years. Although written in the first person, the narrator of one story is not necessarily the narrator of the next story in the book. It starts with a tale about a12-year-old boy who learns some important life lessons during a family trip to Maine's northern-most Aroostook County in the 1950s. It ends with a piece about an elderly Maine couple learning some lessons of their own while coming to grips with old age in the near present. In between there are stories about young soldiers and old soldiers, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers and other sordid types. Half of the ten stories in the book take place in Maine. A lot of the pieces were based on Betit's experiences during the Vietnam War and its aftermath "I call them woulda-coulda-shoulda stories," he said. "All of them contain more than one grain of truth. Usually, a lot more." Previously, Betit published Phu Bai, Kagnew Station and The Man In The Canal, military crime novels set in South Vietnam, Ethiopia and Sweden, respectively, during the late 60s and early 70s. That series follows the adventures of U.S. Army CID investigator John Murphy. During book talks promoting his crime novels Betit sometimes read early versions of a few of the stories in Let Me Tell A Story at his events. "It was a good change of pace and the stories were well received," he said. "Like my other books, this book can be classified as a good read."