Reading Local: Baltimore

Bringing Vincent Home

In August 1969 Kitty Duvall, mother, receives a call from the military. Her youngest child has been shot down in Vietnam and is being transferred to a burn unit in Texas. She leaves Baltimore by plane for the first time ever to be by his bedside. She sits with him while he recovers, spoon-feeding him until the occupational therapist insists he feed himself, helping him sit up and walk around the ward. She also provides quiet motherly attentions to others on the unit, including the overwhelmed medical staff and her fellow parents, not all of whose sons will live. She begins more like the Biblical character Martha, who stayed behind to keep house, and adds the characteristics of Mary, who went out into the world for her son.

Kitty’s husband, the children’s father and an alcoholic, left years before, but as a Catholic, she refuses to divorce him. After more than 20 years of cooking and cleaning for her children, Vincent’s injury forces her to physically and emotionally move outside her usual routine. Bringing Vincent Home (Plain View Press, 2007) is a sweet, slow coming of age story of a middle-aged housewife. It’s a beautiful depiction of a too-often ignored segment of society.

Author Madeleine Mysko, a lifelong Baltimorean, served in the Army Nurse Corps during the Vietnam War in the burn ward at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, where the story is set. She captures the telling details of Baltimore, especially Kitty’s house with its covered porch and all the houses on the street just like it. Mysko still serves as a nurse and writes poetry, short stories, essays, opinion pieces, and book reviews, all with a quiet, simple, direct beauty. She also teaches at the Johns Hopkins Writing Program and edits a column in American Journal of Nursing. Mysko often talks about her experiences working with injured soldiers. Her steady, sober testimony on the damage of war is moving and powerful. Her story “Pop Pop,” about a grandfather whose daughter-in-law and new baby grandson are staying with him and his wife while his son fights in Iraq, is here. Other pieces are available through her website. Bringing Vincent Home was one of Urbanite’s Critic’s Picks in April 2008 (scroll down on link). She also won Individual Artists Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council in 1995 and 2000 and a Baltimore City Artscape Award. Her career, like her writing and her character Kitty Duvall, is quietly impressive, all the more so for its slow build.