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Kansas City, MO – Dana Canedy grew up in a military family in Kentucky, but always expected her life would lead in a totally different direction. She became a senior editor at The New York Times, and won a Pulitzer Prize along the way. But when she was in her 30s, she fell in love with an Army soldier, and after many years, realized they were meant for each other.
They were engaged, and Canedy was pregnant with their child, when First Sergeant Charles Monroe King was deployed to Iraq in late 2005. He would miss the birth, but Canedy gave him a journal to write some messages to their son, Jordan. Sergeant King was able to get two weeks leave, and meet his son. That was just months before he was killed in an explosion of an IED in Baghdad. But King left a 200 page journal for his son, in case he didn't make it home. Dana Canedy eventually turned that journal into a memoir, called A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor. She'll be talking about the book on Wednesday evening at the Plaza Branch of the Kansas City Public Library. KCUR's Sylvia Maria Gross spoke to her last week, and asked if she ever thought she'd be writing such an intimate story about herself.
This story was produced for KC Currents. To listen on your own schedule, subscribe to the KC Currents Podcast.
