Elaine Pinkerton, author (seated) holding the first cover of her book from 2002, Nancy Bartlit, Pajarito Press co-owner, speaker, historian, and Mark Rayburn, Pajarito Press co-owner, art director, and designer. Courtesy/Pajarito Press

PAJARITO PRESS News:

Elaine Pinkerton, author of ‘From Calcutta with Love—The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard’, has entered into a publishing contract with eight-time award-winning Pajarito Press LLC, of Los Alamos.

First published in 2002, ‘From Calcutta with Love’ will be redesigned, rebound, and marketed in outlets in the United States as well as India.

The saga of China-Burma-India—World War II’s forgotten theater—is as heroic as it is seldom told. CBI ground troops were charged with the Herculean task of carving a road from India to China. The treacherous flight pattern over the Himalayas, crucial to supplying the Allied effort, was a virtual suicide mission and pilots who “flew the Hump” braved violent monsoon rains and deadly wind shifts.

Richard Beard, an Army psychologist assigned to the 142 General Hospital in Calcutta, dealt daily with emotional trauma. While American and British soldiers hacked their way through dense tropical forests to build a supply route, Beard immersed himself in the internal jungles of those he treated.

A pillar to the men he served, Beard was an astute listener and observer, pleased to be playing his part. But his own pillar was his wife, Reva, half a world away in Findlay, Ohio. In daily letters to Reva, he poured out not only his own longings and passions but also the unfolding drama of war in painfully exquisite detail tempered with tenderness and humor.

Elaine Pinkerton, who lives in Santa Fe, is the daughter of Richard and Reva Beard. She is an outdoor enthusiast and author of ‘The Santa Fe Trail by Bicycle’, ‘Santa Fe on Foot’, and ‘Beast of Bengal’. She has published features in ‘Family Circle’, ‘New Mexico Magazine’, ‘Runner’s World’, ‘Frontier’, ‘Western World’, and ‘On the Run’.