Donna Balfe

Hindsight Donna Balfe

In Hindsight Carla Whitewater, daughter of a WWII veteran blinded while serving as a pilot, tries to understand the background and events that led to the precipitous end of her childhood. Carlas memories, conjectures, and family stories are interrupted periodically by conversations with her late fathers irreverent, insistent, and outspoken glass eye. Like soldiers throughout history, Carter Whitewater, bore the epigraph of war on both body and spirit. Courage and determination helped him overcome his disability, and with extraordinary intelligence, humor, and wit he initially appeared to be managing the difficult emotional and psychological realm of blindness. In reality, he increasingly used the anesthetizing effect of alcohol to subjugate his underlying anger and resentment about his situation. Cycles of elation and hope followed by despair and uncertainty were the continuing pattern of his life and consequently that of his family.