Purple Hearts

“Against the backdrop of worldwide war, the suppressed hatred and violence of racism explode in a small Texas city, and unlikely heroes risk the kind of moral action that changes destinies. In this time of patriotism, paranoia, sacrifice, and selfishness, Smith's wholly convincing characters reveal the extraordinary secrets and dreams of ordinary people and dramatically remind us that cowardice and courage may be inextricably tangled in anyone's life. Uncompromising yet compassionate, Smith's remarkable rendering of the time and the place give us history as only fiction can, not as facts or imitations, but as deeply felt human experience, as volatile and poignant as life itself.”

— Alan Wier

“The best novel I’ve read about the home front during World War II and [it] illumines the dark fact that there was more to that home scene than Rosie the Riveter and War Bond drives.”

— Brian Wooley

“Purple Hearts seems to me the best book he has ever written. It is a strong story with vivid, complex, and sympathetic characters, set in a time and place that the author has conjured up with an almost eerie exactitude. The social mores, attitudes, slang, prejudices, and complicated sexual yearnings of the population of a remote Texas city during the Second World War are all wonderfully portrayed, and the story itself deepens and gathers force with every passing page.  I'm especially impressed by the authority and economy of Smith's prose. He writes with the precision of a mature, seasoned novelist who understands that the fidelity of his observations are of more worth to the reader than the wattage of his rhetoric.” External reader report for Texas Christian University Press

“C.W. Smith’s novel, Purple Hearts, is driven by one of the most complex and heart-wrenching heroes in literature when the deeply flawed Georgie Karacek is confronted with challenges that would overwhelm the most valiant heart. After only eleven weeks of training Georgie is invalided out of the World War II army to return home to a town on the edge of violence, a domineering mother driven by prejudice and a self-delusional wife, Sylvia, the only woman he has ever loved. When the town spins into violence, Georgie suddenly emerges as the only man standing in the way of that violence. Purple Hearts is a testimony to the mythic courage of the individual driven by love, and, in this, his finest work, C.W. Smith is writing at the height of his power.”

— Jane Wood

"I just finished Smith's book, and I was sad to read the final chapter, which meant that I wouldn't have another chapter waiting for me tomorrow night. Smith's characters are heartbreakingly real. You want them to find happiness, you hate them, you cheer for them, you shake your head, you think, 'Damn, this is real life.' There are no innocents here. There is no redeeming, angelic black man and no triumphant epileptic; what I saw was people trying to carve out their dreams in a world crumbling all around them. The last 100 pages will leave your heart racing, and that's when you realize that you went and fell for these characters. You care about them, in spite of all the damned things they did. It's pure humanity that Smith hands us here--an unexpected gift from a talented storyteller." -- Lori Stephens, author of Song Of The Orange Moons, Some Act of Vision, and Blue Running. 

 “C.W. Smith's sensitive, finely-crafted tale unfolds in a Gulf Coast Texas town that seethes with the reflected violence of WWII. Most of the wounds in Purple Hearts don't come from bullets. Smith gives us the stateside theatre: rations books and strained marriages, the dashed pride of 4-F men, white shipyard workers set against black, and one sweet washout of a soldier, Georgie Karacek, to whom fate delivers a desperate choice--hold on to his beautiful wife or pay a debt to a childhood friend.” Lisa Sandlin, author of Message to the Nurse of Dreams, The Famous Thing About Death, and In the River Province.