"Now, in his vivid memoir, Wait for Me, True Stories of War, Love and Rock & Roll, Bill Gentile turns back the clock to the 1980s and thrusts us into the mountains of Nicaragua and the slums of El Salvador to offer what he calls "a firsthand, frontline account of the human cost of war." He succeeds for two simple reasons: he was willing to take serious risks and, more pertinently, he survived to tell his story when so many around him-soldiers, rebels and photojournalists like himself-were killed. It was, to put it bluntly, a murderous time." - Alan Riding, former New York Times Mexico and Central America bureau chief.
Bill Gentile did more than just "cover" Nicaragua's Sandinista Revolution and the Con-tra War. He lived them. First as corre-spondent for United Press International (UPI) and later as photojournalist for Newsweek magazine, Gentile experi-enced those historic events from the inside, as the partner of a Nicaraguan woman whose prominent family "adopted" him as one of their own. His memoir takes readers not only to the 1979 revolution, the Contra War in the merciless mountains of Nicaragua and to the deadly streets of El Salvador, but also to the steel mills and backyards of southwestern Pennsylva-nia where the Italian immigrant com-munity prepared him for those conflicts, and then waited for his return. This book introduces the American public to the victims of U.S. intervention abroad. It is a firsthand, frontline account of the human cost of war.
Wait for Me: True Stories of War, Love and Rock & Roll, explores family, self, love, loss and love again - told against a backdrop of adversity and warfare.