James B. Wells

Twenty-five years after my father’s death in a 1965 CIA plane crash in Vietnam, I discovered hundreds of letters he had written my mother over his US Army and State Department career. To learn about the father I never got a chance to know, I began corroborating what he wrote by conducting archival and field research across the US and Vietnam. I have since learned that the circumstances of my father’s death were covered up and remain classified. For the last thirty years, I have been on a quest to discover the truth about his death, attempt to find peace for him and my family, and write about it.

Follow my journey as I uncover the clues in the hundreds of letters my father left and learn about his life and subsequent death in South Vietnam.

I’ve spent decades of my professional life as a researcher, involved in dozens of federal and state grants, seventy-something research projects, and this project has been conducted with the same degree of scrutiny and exactitude. It just happens to be deeply personal and the most detailed, most incredible research I’ve ever done. A draft of what publishers call a flap copy or screenwriters a logline follows:

Decades after his father, Major Jack J. Wells, is killed in Vietnam, his youngest son James discovers hundreds of his letters spanning two wars and a State Department career. The letters compel James to learn more about the father he lost as a child. And when he discovers the details of his father’s death are inexplicably classified, an Odyssean journey for the truth begins. Through archival and field research across two continents, James not only learns about events that shaped his father’s love for family, country, truth and duty, but as well, a CIA cover-up of his death. As the details of a story about moral injury, post-traumatic resilience, and the consequences of truth-telling evolve, a son connects with the man he barely knew, learning a new kind of love and faith as he inches closer to the truth.