Book Description

Love and Revolutionary Greetings: An Ohio Boy in the Spanish Civil War is the story of Sam Levinger, a young man who went to Spain in 1937 to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Civil war raged in Spain as the fascist army of Francisco Franco sought to overthrow the democratically elected Republic. Levinger, a dedicated idealist, made the commitment to go to a foreign country to fight fascism. Love and Revolutionary Greetings is placed in the historical context of the 1930s, when freedom everywhere was threatened by Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini. The book is based on Sam Levinger's letters, poems, and stories that he sent home from Spain, interspersed with those of his mother, Elma Levinger. Told in the words of a soldier son and his mother, as well as other members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the book offers an eyewitness account of the hardships and the politics of the times. Men and women from all over the world went to Spain to fight with the International Brigade to defend Spanish democracy. Twenty-eight hundred men and women from the United States joined the International Brigade. Sam Levinger was one of them. Sam died in Spain when he was twenty years old. The author, Sam Levinger's niece, traveled to Spain to search for his unmarked grave. Love and Revolutionary Greetings tells the emotional and political story of American involvement in the Spanish Civil War in the language of people who lived it.