Letters to a soldier's son

When Dana Canedy first met First Sgt. Charles Monroe King, she was immediately attracted to him — but she worried that they were too different to build a relationship together.

Time proved them wrong, and they began a deeply loving relationship that ended much too soon when he was killed in Iraq.

Canedy memorializes their love story in her 2008 book "A Journal  for Jordan," which recounts their relationship in letters to their 10-month-old son, Jordan. Canedy sprinkles excerpts from Charles' journal to their son throughout the book, providing an eloquent counterpoint to her account of their lives together.

For the most part, the book is quietly moving without ever descending into Lifetime movie of the week-style sentimentality. Canedy's account of how she and Charles gradually fell in love is touching and far more plausible than the typical love-at-first-sight cliche.

But the book suffers from one critical problem: Charles emerges as something of a cipher, undeniably strong and decent but not very interesting. His only flaws, at least in his beloved's eyes, are that he occasionally uses bad grammar and is ambivalent about newspapers -- a possible problem, given that Canedy is an editor at the New York Times.

Part of the problem is that Charles is in Iraq for most of the book, so we don't see a lot of him except when he's home on leave. As a result, we get tantalizing glimpses of his character through his journal and his interactions with his family, but it's not enough to satisfy the reader.

"A Journal for Jordan" is certainly an interesting addition to the literature of soldiers and families, and it's refreshingly unsentimental. But it would have been even more powerful if we had learned more about the man whose spirit haunts every page but never quite comes into focus.