Bookplate author event – Patrick Smithwick’s ” War’s Over, Come Home”

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The Bookplate is continuing their 2024 season of author events with author Patrick Smithwick on Wednesday, November 13th. Guests are welcome to join Smithwick and the Bookplate staff for a reading and book signing at 6pm at The Kitchen at The Imperial.  

For soldiers and their families, wars never end. The memories come home, occasionally in triumph, but more often in unpredictable and debilitating ways barely visible to the larger public. Most accounts rightly focus on the soldier’s struggles. Compelling and revealing, Patrick Smithwick’s War’s Over, Come Home is a rare and intimate account from a family’s vantage point, an essential perspective often missed. Their transcontinental efforts to find Iraq war veteran Andrew Smithwick—son, brother and once a friend to many—are a disturbing and eloquent testament to the cascading impact of a single case of PTSD.

Smithwick, a gifted storyteller who has written an acclaimed trilogy about steeplechase racing, has noted elsewhere, “Not for a moment did I imagine that one day I’d be pulling blankets off the faces of homeless men in Seattle, San Diego, Santa Fe, New York, Baltimore, Orlando. Or tapping on their shoulders and asking, ‘Is that you, Andrew?’” Despite its hopeless moments and recurring despair, War’s Over, Come Home is, at its heart, a love story about a family’s resilient and at times, blind commitment to finding Andrew. The sightings, the close calls, his brief return home are inspiring, yet thus far confounding and fruitless. When does one stop looking?

War’s Over, Come Home will strike home with a wide range of readers, from families similarly afflicted by PTSD to policymakers at the Pentagon, from family counselors to sociologists, and most of all to general readers curious about an otherwise invisible world.

“No one who cares about today’s veterans should miss this splendid book.” -Henry Taylor, Pulitzer Prize winning poet and author of This Tilted World Is Where I Live: New and Selected Poems 1962-2020

“This powerful and heart-wrenching book is far too familiar a story to some and far too unfamiliar to others. Through Patrick’s raw and honest story of a father’s journey to find his son…readers gain a deep understanding of the hidden costs of war and the struggles that many veterans face when they return home. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to truly understand the challenges facing our veterans and their families and to help raise awareness and support for the critical mental healthcare needs of our nation’s heroes.” -Zach Iscol, U.S. Marine captain in Iraq from 2001-2007, founder of the Headstrong Project, which offers free mental health care to veterans and their families, and serves as commissioner of New York City Emergency Management

Patrick Smithwick

Patrick Smithwick has been working with horses all of his life. At a very young age he began working with his father, the legendary steeplechase jockey, A.P. Smithwick, who became a trainer after retiring from riding. Smithwick then worked his way through school and college by exercising Thoroughbreds at major East Coast racetracks and riding steeplechase races at such venues as Belmont Park and Saratoga Race Course, and hunt meets such as the Maryland Hunt Club and the Grand National.

​Smithwick received a Bachelor of Arts from Johns Hopkins University in 1973 followed by a Master of Arts in creative writing from Hollins College in 1975. After working in the newspaper business for several years, Smithwick began teaching English, philosophy, photography, and journalism at both the high school and collegiate levels. In 1988, he received a master of liberal arts from Johns Hopkins University and in 2000 he received his degree in education for ministry from University of the South. During this time, Smithwick taught as well as held the position of director of publications and public relations at two different schools.

He has now turned his two biggest passions into two businesses – writing and training. Thoroughbred steeplechase horse and riding. He also gives talks, teaches part-time, and does freelance writing. In addition to Racing My Father, Smithwick has written The Art of Healing: Union Memorial Hospital and Gilman Voices, 1897-1997. He has also written for many publications including Mid-Atlantic Country, The Maryland Horse, Horsemen’s Journal, and The Chronicle of the Horse. Smithwick resides on the horse farm where he was raised in Monkton, Maryland, with his wife Ansley. They have three children: Paddy, Andrew, and Eliza.

For more event details, or to reserve your seats, contact The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or [email protected]. These events are free and open to the public, but reservations are recommended. The Bookplate will continue their event series on Saturday, December 7th with The Word Girls. The Kitchen at The Imperial is located at 208 High Street in Chestertown.