![HauntingBeauty](http://www.reflectionsofvietnam.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/HauntingBeauty.jpg)
The 2011 Richard Boes Memorial Award goes to James John Magner for his book A Haunting Beauty: Vietnam Through the Eyes of an Artist (ISBN 978-1461057543). The award is a $200 cash prize for best debut book by a veteran (fiction or memoir) and is sponsored by Modern History Press. An excerpt from Magner’s book will appear in an upcoming issue of Recovering The Self: A Journal of Hope and Healing. The contest is administered by Reader Views Inc., which includes a general book award contest as well.
Joseph Yurt’s review at Reader Views noted: “This is a beautiful read about a subject that has been dominated in its documentation by its horror. Now, readers can share another sense of what it was all about.”
![Richard Boes (R.I.P.) Richard Boes (R.I.P.)](http://www.reflectionsofvietnam.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/rboes.jpg)
Richard Boes enlisted into the US Army and served in Vietnam in 1969 – 1970 with the First Air Cav. He is the author of two books, The Last Dead Soldier Left Alive (2007) a firsthand inquiry into why thousands of Vietnam veterans have committed suicide and Last Train Out (2008). Right up to his death Richard was writing a third, In the Valley of Dry Bones. He passed away on Feb 21st, 2009 at the VA Hospital in Albany, NY.
Past winners of the Richard Boes Memorial Award
- 2009 My Last War: A Vietnam Veteran’s Tour in Iraq by Charles M. Grist (ISBN 9781440152689)
- 2010 Sworn to Secrecy for Life: A Young American Spy’s Odyssey through War-torn Germany and Russia by Charles Joseph Fickey (ISBN 9781432761189)