النص 🔗
WEBVTT
00:00:35.009 --> 00:00:48.369
In conversation with Terry Shepherd, award-winning broadcaster, narrator, and author, a deep dive into the writer's craft with the artists and support systems who create the stories we love.
00:00:49.489 --> 00:00:53.089
In the jungle, an order can arrive in an instant.
00:00:53.329 --> 00:00:57.649
Living with what you do next can take a lifetime.
00:00:58.209 --> 00:01:12.370
Fresh out of college, Costa is drafted into the army and sent from Buffalo to Vietnam, where survival depends and demands on decisions that no classroom could prepare him to make.
00:01:12.609 --> 00:01:17.329
But what happens when obeying an order means betraying everything he believes is right.
00:01:17.729 --> 00:01:23.969
Our guest today, Mark Rubenstein, brings an extraordinary depth of experience to that question.
00:01:24.210 --> 00:01:38.849
An Army veteran who served as a field medic, caring for the 82nd paratroopers, he later became a forensic psychiatrist, examining human behavior in both the consulting room and the courtroom.
00:01:39.009 --> 00:01:48.929
An award-winning author of 26 books, he has spent a career exploring what people do under pressure and what those choices leave behind.
00:01:49.409 --> 00:02:01.250
His new novel, Costa's War, confronts the distance between military authority and individual conscience and the struggle to survive with your humanity intact.
00:02:01.569 --> 00:02:03.649
Mark Rubenstein, I've been looking forward to this.
00:02:03.730 --> 00:02:05.090
Thanks for the conversation.
00:02:05.409 --> 00:02:07.090
Thanks for having me, Terry.
00:02:07.409 --> 00:02:09.730
That's the best threes I've ever heard of the novel.
00:02:10.050 --> 00:02:12.129
What made you decide to become a psychiatrist?
00:02:12.370 --> 00:02:20.050
There's an old saying that everyone who becomes a psychiatrist is really looking to understand his own pathology.
00:02:20.689 --> 00:02:26.050
So I guess that to some unknown extent at the time, that's what motivated me.
00:02:26.289 --> 00:02:34.449
But I always found that the drama of human relations was far more interesting than the drama of medical pathology.
00:02:34.930 --> 00:02:41.250
And I also was struck by the fact that every patient in psychiatry tells you a story.
00:02:41.569 --> 00:02:55.490
And there can be 30 different people who present with the same diagnosis, let's say depression, and yet on the other hand, they have 30 different stories that led to that final common pathway of depression.
00:02:55.889 --> 00:03:01.969
And how do you, as a professional, guide them towards recovery?
00:03:02.530 --> 00:03:03.810
You do the best you can.
00:03:04.129 --> 00:03:18.930
You meet with them with some frequency, so that you begin to see patterns emerge in their behaviors, in their histories, and then you begin to point out what is an insightful way of having them understand themselves.
00:03:19.090 --> 00:03:21.969
And hopefully, insight can lead to change.
00:03:22.129 --> 00:03:27.569
Nobody comes to a psychiatrist because they're happy or they're doing well in life.
00:03:27.729 --> 00:03:34.050
Freud's definition of mental health was to be successful in love and in work.
00:03:34.370 --> 00:03:36.930
And that pretty much encompasses it all.
00:03:37.090 --> 00:03:45.490
And people usually come to a psychiatrist or a psychologist because they're unhappy with either love, work, or in many instances both.
00:03:45.810 --> 00:03:48.449
Who was Costa before the draft?
00:03:48.530 --> 00:03:54.370
And what did you want readers to understand about him before he reached Vietnam?
00:03:55.169 --> 00:03:58.689
He was, at the time he was drafted, he's 21 years old.
00:03:58.849 --> 00:04:02.849
He's a upper middle class or a lower middle class kid.
00:04:03.090 --> 00:04:18.129
Basically, he's still a kid from Buffalo, New York, comes from a working-class family, has his friends who are mainly, they're mainly Irish, Polish, and Italian, living in a working-class neighborhood of Buffalo.
00:04:18.370 --> 00:04:22.930
And I had to do a lot of research on Buffalo because, frankly, I'd never been there in my life.
00:04:23.090 --> 00:04:29.329
And the the Lackawanna Railroad is right nearby, and the Lake Erie is right nearby.
00:04:29.409 --> 00:04:33.490
And it's a real working, it was at that time a real working class city.
00:04:33.649 --> 00:04:52.930
And he was in business school, which he didn't particularly enjoy at the University of Buffalo, and really didn't like the fact that most of the kids who were attending school at Buffalo looked down upon what they called the townies, the students who lived and came from Buffalo.
00:04:53.170 --> 00:05:06.769
So he has a sort of all-American lower middle class background where his expectation was he possibly could go to work for his friend's father, Jan Kowalski, who owned the furniture store.
00:05:06.930 --> 00:05:13.009
But of course, he gets drafted, and that throws a monkey wrench into everything.
00:05:13.569 --> 00:05:15.410
Mark Rubinstein is our special guest.
00:05:15.490 --> 00:05:18.370
We're talking about his fascinating book, Costa's War.
00:05:18.529 --> 00:05:22.930
His website is Mark Rubinstein-author.com.
00:05:23.410 --> 00:05:27.170
How did you become a field medic in the Army?
00:05:27.569 --> 00:05:28.930
I was pre-NAM.
00:05:29.329 --> 00:05:33.810
In 1964, I joined up and had a choice.
00:05:33.969 --> 00:05:39.969
I could pick the MOS, military occupational specialty that I wanted, and medicine fascinated me.
00:05:40.129 --> 00:05:51.810
So I was put through after basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, I was assigned to Womack Army Hospital in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the home of the 82nd Airborne.
00:05:51.969 --> 00:05:59.889
And while I was there, I attended to paratroopers who were injured, sick, who required either surgery or medical treatment or whatever.
00:06:00.050 --> 00:06:13.170
I was basically on a surgical
Load full transcript
ward and took care of paratroopers who were really either seriously injured or who had problems with hernias or other internal difficulties.
00:06:13.329 --> 00:06:20.209
And that experience was so seminal in my life that when I got out of the army, I decided I wanted to go to medical school.
00:06:20.370 --> 00:06:23.649
But of course, I had none of the pre-medical sciences under my belt.
00:06:23.810 --> 00:06:29.810
I myself had been a business administration student with a degree, a BA in business administration.
00:06:30.050 --> 00:06:42.370
So I went back to NYU and took all the preclinical, the pre-medical sciences, embryology, biochemistry, et cetera, physics, chemistry, and applied to medical school.
00:06:42.449 --> 00:06:48.209
And lo and behold, I was accepted and went into medicine and medical school.
00:06:48.370 --> 00:06:58.370
And as though I, although I liked it, when I was exposed to psychiatry in the third year during my clerkships, I said, this is fascinating stuff.
00:06:58.610 --> 00:07:02.370
It's as though every patient is telling you basically a novel.
00:07:02.529 --> 00:07:07.889
And I had always loved reading novels, so I decided to go into psychiatry.
00:07:08.610 --> 00:07:13.170
This book grew out of your award-winning novella, The Foot Soldier.
00:07:13.649 --> 00:07:19.569
What remained unfinished for you, and what did the novel allow you to explore?
00:07:20.209 --> 00:07:31.329
The Foot Soldier was a 10,000-word novella that I just conjured up out of my own imagination and partly from my own experiences having been in the Army.
00:07:31.490 --> 00:07:43.410
And I was absolutely amazed because it was not only nominated for an award by the Benjamin Franklin Award judges, but it took silver, it took the silver award.
00:07:43.490 --> 00:07:47.649
It won second place, even though it was up against full-length novels.
00:07:47.810 --> 00:07:49.410
I was absolutely amazed.
00:07:49.569 --> 00:07:59.009
Then when I began to read the Amazon reviews, they were uniformly the novella, but almost everyone wanted to know more.
00:07:59.250 --> 00:08:00.769
What happened to Costa?
00:08:00.930 --> 00:08:02.850
What happened to him after the army?
00:08:03.089 --> 00:08:04.930
How did Vietnam affect him?
00:08:05.170 --> 00:08:12.209
They wanted more of the rich flavoring of what the Vietnam experience did to him.
00:08:12.370 --> 00:08:17.490
And I and here I am almost ten years later.
00:08:17.649 --> 00:08:29.490
I went back to it and it gave me the opportunity to really flesh him out and to see what happened after he leaves Vietnam.
00:08:29.649 --> 00:08:31.250
And that's where the novel it's done.
00:08:31.410 --> 00:08:46.370
It also gave me the opportunity to expand upon the experience in the jungle, the smells, the sights, the sounds, everything, to immerse the reader in the experience and the horrific nature of jungle warfare.
00:08:46.850 --> 00:08:50.210
Costa goes to war soon after college graduation.
00:08:50.450 --> 00:08:55.170
How does that abrupt transition shape his response to military life in combat?
00:08:55.569 --> 00:08:59.170
He had never been exposed to anything like that, for sure.
00:08:59.410 --> 00:09:15.009
And at first he was quite frightened and almost overwhelmed by the sudden by being thrust into the jungle and into basically the threat of death, virtually every waking moment, and even when you're sleeping.
00:09:15.170 --> 00:09:27.009
As he says at one point in the novel, it's written in the first person, he's lucky if he ever got two hours of sleep at one point in time, because they had to be on guard all the time for the Viet Cong.
00:09:27.250 --> 00:09:30.289
He also said that my rifle was cleaner than my teeth.
00:09:30.450 --> 00:09:40.769
And he was just he was both appalled and mystified by the sense of displacement that he had in the jungle.
00:09:40.930 --> 00:09:55.569
As he says at some point, we could be walking through, we could do 10 clicks or kilometers or two clicks, and I'd feel as though I was walking through the same jungle terrain that I'd walked in three hours ago because it all looked alike.
00:09:55.730 --> 00:10:02.369
There was such a sense of dislocation, of displacement that he'd never experienced in his life.
00:10:02.450 --> 00:10:17.890
After all, he had graduated from high school, went to college for four years, and had what we would probably describe as a routine, ordinary civilian's life, and suddenly thrust into this hellish environment.
00:10:18.450 --> 00:10:20.289
Mark Rubinstein is our special guest.
00:10:20.369 --> 00:10:23.250
He's written a fascinating story, Costas War.
00:10:23.490 --> 00:10:28.769
The website, Mark Rubenstein-Author, don't forget that dash, dash author.com.
00:10:29.250 --> 00:10:34.930
The novel asks what happens when an order violates a soldier's conscience.
00:10:35.089 --> 00:10:40.130
How do you make that conflict feel immediate and personal on the page?
00:10:41.032 --> 00:10:48.553
He's given an order that not only violates his conscience, but violates everything he ever believed about the human soul.
00:10:48.690 --> 00:10:51.329
And he's basically asked to commit a war crime.
00:10:51.490 --> 00:10:55.490
And he's asked to do this under extreme duress.
00:10:55.650 --> 00:11:04.049
I'm not sure if I want to get into the exact details of what that duress is because it'll give away a certain high tension point in the novel.
00:11:04.369 --> 00:11:07.490
But he he there's an unreality to it.
00:11:07.569 --> 00:11:25.809
There's a a sense that this is unreal, a derealization that occurs when this is when he's commanded to do this and when he's been singled out of the entire platoon because the commanding officer, a second lieutenant, had something against him.
00:11:26.049 --> 00:11:34.450
I don't want to go into all the details, but the his experience with this particular lieutenant in this platoon was basically horrific.
00:11:34.609 --> 00:11:46.369
It was equal to the horror of the leeches and the mosquitoes and the sense of the enemy waiting, lying in wait, and of the snipers and of what could potentially await him.
00:11:46.529 --> 00:11:56.930
Even to relieve himself in the jungle was something that one would never even think in terms of the ordinariness of one's regular life.
00:11:57.089 --> 00:12:18.930
Without getting too graphic, there there's a point where he has to relieve himself, and also there's another point where they go through a bog filled with leeches, and what they have to do just to get the leeches off themselves strains not just credulity, but it strains every thought you could have about your own bodily integrity.
00:12:19.170 --> 00:12:29.089
These parasites sucking your blood can be an overwhelming experience, especially when you have a number of them on your legs and on your private parts.
00:12:29.809 --> 00:12:34.930
In combat, a soldier may have only seconds to decide what's right.
00:12:35.170 --> 00:12:41.650
How much can we fairly expect of someone acting under that kind of fear and pressure?
00:12:41.730 --> 00:12:43.250
Aaron Ross Powell It's very strange.
00:12:43.410 --> 00:12:48.690
I've also treated certain veterans who have seen combat, so I'm somewhat familiar with that.
00:12:49.089 --> 00:13:12.210
There's a point where you're not thinking, you're just reacting to the threat to the sound of automatic weaponry, where you're seeing tracers fly overhead, where you feel and hear and see almost the percussion blasts of the 16s or the AK-47s and of the tracer bullets, and where you see death and dying all around you.
00:13:12.450 --> 00:13:20.849
It has a surreal quality that is very difficult to explain in in in terms of writing a novel or a scene.
00:13:20.930 --> 00:13:26.849
It's filled with terror and confusion, and over overall the need to survive.
00:13:27.009 --> 00:13:31.329
I think every soldier experiences above all the need to survive.
00:13:31.569 --> 00:13:37.890
It's an individual mandate to just get through this one firefight and you do what you have to do.
00:13:38.130 --> 00:13:43.730
And there's an interesting component of that in the in in Costa's war.
00:13:43.970 --> 00:13:47.250
There are some soldiers who are close to being discharged.
00:13:47.809 --> 00:13:53.970
The rule was you had to do one year in combat in the jungle, in in country.
00:13:54.210 --> 00:13:59.650
And some soldiers are a couple of weeks away from having served there one year.
00:13:59.809 --> 00:14:01.730
They're known as short timers.
00:14:02.849 --> 00:14:04.289
Or they're short.
00:14:04.529 --> 00:14:05.890
That was the army lingo.
00:14:06.049 --> 00:14:06.930
They're short.
00:14:07.650 --> 00:14:19.809
And when you're short, you don't want to go out on another mission because what a shame, as a presidential candidate once said, I didn't want to be the last guy to die in a war that was just about over.
00:14:20.130 --> 00:14:22.289
So it's an interesting
kind of take.
00:14:22.690 --> 00:14:36.210
After that one year, assuming you have a two-year stint after you've been drafted, you go behind the lines, you go to the rear echelons, and every man fantasizes about surviving long enough to go to the rear.
00:14:36.450 --> 00:14:45.650
And that becomes your be all and end all just to survive, to go to the rear, to live to see another day, another week, another year, and to go on with your life.
00:14:46.930 --> 00:14:49.250
You have to remember that all of these guys are young.
00:14:49.410 --> 00:14:53.250
They range in age from late seventeen through eighteen, nineteen.
00:14:53.490 --> 00:14:56.529
Maybe the oldest one was Costa, who was twenty-one.
00:14:57.250 --> 00:15:01.250
And the lieutenant is maybe twenty-eight or twenty-nine.
00:15:01.410 --> 00:15:11.490
These are all young men in the prime of life, and the farthest thing from their minds until they've been drafted was the notion of death dying and injury.
00:15:11.890 --> 00:15:17.410
And they're thrust into this environment in which that is all that confronts them.
00:15:17.890 --> 00:15:35.410
Death, dying, injury and the horror of things such as bouncing beddies, various kinds of ordinance that are were arranged by the VC that would pop up on springs that were made out of leftover American ordinance that could cut a GI in half.
00:15:35.730 --> 00:15:47.490
Walking point, which is the unfortunate man who has to lead the platoon out in front of them, and Costa, of course, is chosen to walk point.
00:15:47.890 --> 00:15:56.849
And typically that's done that that's left to a very experienced man who's done this before, although there's always a first time, as the lieutenant says.
00:15:57.089 --> 00:16:12.450
And it was it's just a an horrific kind of situation in which nobody in his right mind would want to find himself, but as a draftee, you're conscripted into this, and this becomes your life.
00:16:12.930 --> 00:16:19.410
Did writing this book change any of your own beliefs about courage, obedience, or responsibility?
00:16:19.970 --> 00:16:20.769
I think it did.
00:16:20.849 --> 00:16:39.170
I think, although it's funny, when you think about conscience and obedience, when you're in a situation that's so demanding and that's so life-threatening, many people, perhaps the majority of us, will drop their s their moral code and do what needs to be done just to survive.
00:16:39.410 --> 00:16:45.329
In combat, you can be shot by your commanding officer for disobeying a lawful order.
00:16:45.569 --> 00:16:49.569
And what is lawful can depend on various circumstances.
00:16:49.809 --> 00:17:16.849
Obviously, what happened at Milai in in the Vietnam War was not lawful, yet many of these soldiers went along with it and did what they did, and they shot innocent civilians, men, women, and children, even infants, because it was just the the convenient thing to do if they didn't want to incur the wrath and the and the consequences of having disobeyed the Lieutenant Cali.
00:17:17.809 --> 00:17:27.089
And of course that that was a very striking situation that is very different from in in certain ways from what Costa has to face.
00:17:27.490 --> 00:17:33.970
But it did make me think about what would I do if I were faced with that kind of an order.
00:17:34.210 --> 00:17:37.730
And also it depends on how frustrated one is.
00:17:37.970 --> 00:17:56.529
When you've seen your comrades die, when the enemy has taken its toll, when your kill numbers are low and you're being constantly pressed to have higher kill numbers, and then a order comes down to do something that is, let's say, borderline, what do you do?
00:17:56.690 --> 00:17:58.529
How do you come to terms with that?
00:17:58.690 --> 00:18:02.049
And I think I questioned myself, what would I do?
00:18:02.370 --> 00:18:28.690
And I have no easy answer because it's easy for me being an armchair writer to make a judgment, but when you're when you survive the leeches and the bouncing beddies and the snipers and the mud holes and the deprivations of the jungle, of the bush, your thinking changes and you no longer think in the rational, logical way that you did prior to that time.
00:18:29.650 --> 00:18:37.650
Was there a scene that was especially difficult to write, either emotionally or because you struggled with Costa's decision?
00:18:37.730 --> 00:18:49.730
Aaron Powell I think the struggle for Costa and his decision was difficult to write, because I when I write, I am in the head of the protagonist, especially if I'm writing in the first person.
00:18:49.890 --> 00:18:50.769
I am him.
00:18:50.930 --> 00:18:58.529
And i I don't know if that's a an asset or a liability, but I find myself thinking and feeling what he's thinking and feeling.
00:18:58.769 --> 00:19:08.370
And when Costa is given this order and he has to make a decision about what to do, that really it strained me.
00:19:08.610 --> 00:19:12.850
It took me to the edge of my own believability if there's such a thing.
00:19:13.009 --> 00:19:14.370
Can I believe in myself?
00:19:14.529 --> 00:19:18.210
Do I know what I really would do in this kind of situation?
00:19:18.450 --> 00:19:20.930
So I gave him an easy out.
00:19:21.330 --> 00:19:25.090
You've worked in medicine, the courtroom, and fiction.
00:19:25.490 --> 00:19:30.289
How has each changed your understanding of human nature?
00:19:31.250 --> 00:19:37.009
Medicine made me very aware that life is a limited thing, that we are, we we all know this.
00:19:37.170 --> 00:19:39.090
No one gets out of this life alive.
00:19:39.250 --> 00:19:45.090
We all know that it's when I turned 60, a woman said to me, You're in the youth of old age.
00:19:45.250 --> 00:19:46.690
So I said, I'll take it.
00:19:46.850 --> 00:19:56.690
Anyway, medicine taught me about the vulnerabilities of being alive and about the limitations of life and the fact that it really it ends for every one of us.
00:19:56.850 --> 00:20:14.370
And the
courtroom made me somewhat cynical because I saw the worst of human behavior, not the way someone in Vietnam would have seen it, but in in terms of what I expected to be sophisticated, logical, law-abiding scenarios.
00:20:14.610 --> 00:20:18.450
I saw plaintiffs and defendants lie.
00:20:18.930 --> 00:20:23.170
I saw plaintiffs' attorneys exaggerate and guild the lily.
00:20:23.570 --> 00:20:34.370
I had one situation where a woman had been lying in her bed and part of the ceiling had dropped down on her face and had resulted in terrible scars all over her.
00:20:34.450 --> 00:20:36.610
She was only 28, 29 years old.
00:20:36.769 --> 00:20:39.970
And as an attractive woman, this was devastating for her.
00:20:40.130 --> 00:20:52.130
So I evaluated her on the at the behest of the plaintiff's of her attorney, or plaintiff's attorney, and I testified as to how depressed she was and how the scarification was as much emotional as it was physical.
00:20:52.289 --> 00:21:00.049
And I could see the j just as you're doing now, Terry, I could see the jurors shake, nodding their heads that this was absolutely on the money.
00:21:00.210 --> 00:21:09.730
So then the judge called for a recess, and the plaintiff's attorney, a guy named Ivan Sinclair, that's a fake name, okay?
00:21:10.049 --> 00:21:14.210
He grabs me, moves me into a stairwell that was just adjacent to the courtroom.
00:21:14.370 --> 00:21:17.490
He says, Look, part of the ceiling fell down on her head.
00:21:17.650 --> 00:21:22.049
And I want you to tell the jury that she had post-concussion syndrome, too.
00:21:22.210 --> 00:21:24.049
So I said, That's bullshit.
00:21:24.289 --> 00:21:26.130
He said, Life is bullshit.
00:21:26.289 --> 00:21:30.049
And I said, Excuse me, my life is not bullshit.
00:21:30.210 --> 00:21:31.250
I can't say that.
00:21:31.410 --> 00:21:33.650
He never sent me another case.
00:21:35.090 --> 00:21:37.090
So I learned to be cynical.
00:21:37.650 --> 00:21:40.930
Psychiatry taught me that everybody has problems.
00:21:41.170 --> 00:22:08.850
Everybody on some level is somewhat insecure, especially a guy like Donald Trump, especially the people who are in love with themselves, who are narcissists, that at rock bottom they have an abiding sense of insecurity, that they have to shore themselves up by collecting, by making more money, or by collecting people or accoutrements.
00:22:08.930 --> 00:22:19.490
And certainly nobody gets out of this life alive, and nobody gets out of this life without having to endure very significant intrapsychic problems.
00:22:20.289 --> 00:22:32.210
There is a mantra that has been at the center of my mind for the last few years, and that is the reality that all of us are carrying burdens that other people don't know about.
00:22:32.529 --> 00:22:38.930
What advice do you have as a psychiatric professional of how we could cope?
00:22:39.490 --> 00:22:40.210
Absolutely.
00:22:40.370 --> 00:22:53.250
Not only don't other people know what we're
carrying, but to each of us, our burdens seem immense, perhaps the greatest of any burden that could ever inhabit a human being.
00:22:53.490 --> 00:23:00.049
It's that sense of self as being burdened beyond anything that anyone else could even understand.
00:23:00.529 --> 00:23:03.090
And I've seen this in patients over the years.
00:23:03.250 --> 00:23:06.049
I've seen this, I've felt that in myself.
00:23:06.289 --> 00:23:24.450
And again, I repeat that I think every person who goes into psychology or psychiatry as a specialty, as a profession, is ultimately seeking to learn more about himself or herself and is trying to understand those burdensome issues and problems, which can never be done completely.
00:23:24.690 --> 00:23:27.410
That's partly what's so frustrating.
00:23:27.570 --> 00:23:38.210
And no matter how much insight you develop into yourself, there you are at age 65, and you find yourself falling into the same emotional trap you did when you were 25.
00:23:38.690 --> 00:23:40.370
It just happens that way.
00:23:40.529 --> 00:23:42.529
And if you're lucky, you catch it.
00:23:42.690 --> 00:23:47.570
You catch it before it has severe consequences, and you make another mistake.
00:23:47.730 --> 00:23:51.170
And life is filled with mistakes and with regrets.
00:23:51.490 --> 00:23:54.529
And nobody gets out of this life without some regrets.
00:23:54.610 --> 00:24:00.769
I know that Edith Piaf on her deathbed said, Je regrette rien, I regret nothing, but I don't believe that.
00:24:01.090 --> 00:24:06.289
The sparrow, she had to regret something, a lost love, that she wasn't taller.
00:24:06.450 --> 00:24:07.009
Who knows?
00:24:07.170 --> 00:24:08.289
We all have regrets.
00:24:08.529 --> 00:24:12.370
What do you hope readers will take away from their encounter with Costas War?
00:24:13.090 --> 00:24:19.490
I hope they'll appreciate what our veterans of the Vietnam War went through and what they endured.
00:24:19.570 --> 00:24:34.370
And of course, so many of them were spat upon when they returned, and they were called baby killers and went through terrible times, and there are so many of them that are still dysfunctional and homeless, although now they're in their 60s, 70s, and some of them are even in their eighties.
00:24:34.769 --> 00:24:45.970
I also hope that it just gives readers a good, exciting read and something that they can think about and assess their own moral conscience, their own moral surety.
00:24:46.370 --> 00:24:49.970
What would I have done had I been in Costa's shoes?
00:24:50.049 --> 00:24:54.690
And maybe give the reader an opportunity for some self-reflection.
00:24:54.850 --> 00:25:04.930
Maybe that's asking for too much, but above all, I just hope the reader will enjoy the read, despite the fact that there are times in the novel where it's trying and a bit difficult.
00:25:05.570 --> 00:25:07.170
The book is Costa's war.
00:25:07.570 --> 00:25:12.049
The website, MarkRubinstein-author.com.
00:25:12.769 --> 00:25:14.370
It's a fascinating book.
00:25:14.610 --> 00:25:18.049
It will trouble you, but it will also enlighten you.
00:25:18.210 --> 00:25:19.970
Mark Rubinstein, this has been wonderful.
00:25:20.049 --> 00:25:21.330
Thanks for the conversation.
00:25:21.570 --> 00:25:22.610
Thank you, Terry.
00:25:22.690 --> 00:25:27.410
I really appreciate the opportunity to be here with you, and you have a wonderful smile.
00:25:27.650 --> 00:25:28.210
Thank you.
00:25:28.450 --> 00:25:29.650
Years of therapy.
00:25:29.970 --> 00:25:32.049
Years of therapy that hasn't changed.
00:25:32.370 --> 00:25:36.610
In Conversation with Terry Shepard is a copyrighted presentation.
00:25:36.850 --> 00:25:38.289
All rights reserved.
00:25:38.370 --> 00:25:39.730
I'm Lisa Davis.
00:25:39.890 --> 00:25:43.170
Join Terry Shepherd next time in conversation.