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Eleanor Donald Alspaugh was raised in Hatboro, Pennsylvania and graduated with a B.S.B.A. from Shippensburg University. Formerly an Assistant Vice President, she became a multi-award-winning author after she captured the antics of raising her three kids and life as a wife and working mother in The Mommy-Go-Round, a humorous and heartwarming account of motherhood, childhood, and everything in between. In September 2022, The Mommy-Go-Round was named a recipient of the prestigious Mom’s Choice Award. The Mommy-Go-Round also received the 1st Place Pacific Book award, Readers’ Favorite Bronze Book Award in the Parenting/Family categories, professional and individual 5-star reviews and other magazine book awards. El resides with her husband and family in Carlisle, PA, and recently published a children’s book called When D is For Deployed, also a 5-star book which provides encouragement to children facing a parent’s deployment. A portion of the purchase price will go to the Gary Sinise Foundation in support of veterans and their families. Eleanor has devoted much time and research to the writing of The Heart of a Soldier, which shares her decorated father’s letters sent home during World War II as well as her parents’ love story set against historic highlights and issues of World War II. Eleanor is currently a part-time author, photographer and caregiver and remains a crazy wife, mother and proud grandmother! She looks forward to spending more time completing a sequel to The Mommy-Go-Round as well as completing a second children’s book.
Reviewed by Tom Gauthier for Readers' Favorite
The Heart of a Soldier is a work of military non-fiction written by Eleanor D. Alspaugh, the daughter of soldier George Donald. Her work in researching and compiling this riveting account of the years around WWII is a study of the soldier’s psychology, a love story, and a brilliant compilation of views by a daughter of the swirling events of the time. Reading a history book almost always has a void. One gets the facts, details, timelines, but one seldom gets the chance to wrap a person in a warm hug, hear whispers of their hopes and fears, their plans for the future. Eleanor D. Alspaugh has broken through that void with her heartwarming, historically accurate book The Heart of a Soldier: Letters from 1st Sergeant George Donald of the “Super Sixth” Armored Division (1941-45).
Reading this personal work by Eleanor D. Alspaugh is a rare opportunity to merge history with the handwritten view of a man in the middle of it, then blend the view of the young daughter who lived through the aftermath to produce a history-cum-memoir-cum-love story into a book as compelling for the reader as The Heart of a Soldier. I wrapped my arms around Eleanor and cheered her every word, her reflections on her father’s words and his personality, and her candid observations of her own feelings as a participant in the story. No single element of this book is in itself an easy task to write: a summary of war history, images of a man’s day-to-day experiences in uniform through training and into combat, wounded and decorated for bravery, and a memoir of a young girl’s point of view. But Eleanor has brilliantly woven all of these into The Heart of a Soldier. My highest accolades for this book are freely given. As her father’s commanders said: "Well Done."
