Authors

Michael Norman joined the United States Marine Corps in 1967 at age twenty, and six months later found himself on a battlefield in Vietnam with Golf Company, 2^nd Battalion, 9^th Marines, taking part in twenty-eight combat operations. In 1969, honorably discharged, he enrolled at Rutgers University as an English major. Across a forty-year writing career, he has worked for three daily newspapers: the Home News in New Brunswick, N.J, the Trenton Times in Trenton, N.J. and the New York Times, where he covered local, regional and national news and started two news feature columns.

 

In 1990, he published his first book, These Good Men; Friendships Forged From War, a critically acclaimed memoir from Crown Books. His magazine stories and feature columns have appeared regularly in the Times and his work has been syndicated internationally. He is a member of the tenured faculty of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University where he teaches narrative journalism in the institute’s Program in Literary Reportage.

 

 

Elizabeth M. Norman

Beth Norman is the daughter of two World War II veterans. Her father served with the U.S. Army in Europe in 1944; her mother was in uniform with the U.S. Coast Guard. Beth began her professional career as a registered nurse before turning to the study of history and writing. She received her Bachelor of Science degree from Rutgers University (where she and Michael met and were married). She earned her graduate and doctoral degrees from New York University, then joined the tenured faculty there in 1998. She currently is a professor in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Development and Education where she teaches history, writing and research design in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences.

 

In 1990, Beth published her first book, Women at War: The Story of Fifty Military Nurses Who Served in Vietnam 1965-1973, (University of Pennsylvania Press). She followed this with We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Women Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese (1999, Random House.) Both books are still in print. Her work on We Band of Angels led her to look at the larger story of the battle for Bataan and the Bataan Death March, an inquiry that led to Tears in the Darkness. She has won a number of awards for her work, among them an Official Commendation from the Department of the Army, and a Certificate of Appreciation from the New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

 

Michael and Elizabeth Norman spent ten years researching and interviewing for “Tears In The Darkness.” They made four trips to Asia and crossed America several times for the book. They have two grown sons, Joshua and Benjamin, and a daughter-in-law, Rachel Cahn Norman. For most of their married life, the Normans have lived in Montclair N. J.