Patrick's profile
Patrick Smithwick’s new memoir War’s Over, Come Home, A Father’s Search for His Son, Two-tour Marine Veteran of the Iraq War has vaulted the author onto the national stage.
Patrick has appeared on a wide variety of podcast and radio interviews nationwide including the reissued Free Thinking with Montel Williams and In Conversation with Frank Schaeffer. Last May, when the memoir was launched, it immediately became an Amazon bestseller. On Father’s Day, last June, the Baltimore Sunday Sun came out with an extremely complimentary story on War’s Over taking up three-quarters of the front page and jumping to a full page with photos. Sales soared.
Readers from across the country were deeply affected by the book. Many read the book in one weekend, some in one day. They began calling him, emailing him from Europe, sending letters, contacting him through his website, inviting him to give talks and do signings. Soon, he was traveling the country, giving presentations from Burlington to Baltimore to Annapolis to Santa Fe to to Denver to Richmond to Worcester, MA. Just in Maryland he gave emotional presentations, galvanizing his audiences, at The Mount Clare Museum, The Women’s Club of Baltimore, Manor Mill, the Maryland Horse Library and Education Center, the Hereford Fire Hall Senior Citizens Center, the Easton Library and at private homes. Tears flowed at each one of these.
Over Veterans Day weekend of 2023 the airways and newspapers were filled with positive news about the book. Articles of Patrick’s on what Veterans Day means to his family appeared in the publications: Reporters Inc., The Maria Shriver Sunday Paper, and the D.C. political paper, The Hill, while radio shows in Seattle and Albuquerque featured interviews with the author. A full-page story in The Epoch Times was seen by a readership in the millions and was published in 21 languages in 33 countries
On Friday of Veterans Weekend, Patrick was on Tom Hall’s WYPR Baltimore show Mid Day. On Sunday, he was highly honored to be awarded an Executive Citation by Baltimore Executive Johnny Olszewski at the Baltimore County Veterans Celebration held at Towson University for his “Outstanding Dedication and Service in Support of Veterans’ Issues.”
War’s Over is a call to action. It is changing the behavior of readers toward the homeless. It is changing the behavior of readers toward members of their own family who suffer from PTSD. War’s Over is also the study of a gray area seldom addressed in American letters: experiencing grief not through a final and definite loss, such as the death of a loved one, but rather through an ambiguous loss. The Smithwick family has lost their son and brother to homelessness and PTSD; and yet—they have not; Andrew is out there camping on a riverbank, hiking through the foothills of a mountain, or pushing his bicycle down the sidewalks of America, and they are searching for him.
Veterans who have fought in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam have thanked Patrick, looked him in the eye, gripped his hand, and asserted that he was brave to write this book. Parents have taken a special interest in the memoir, posting reviews on Facebook and Amazon, and telling the author in private that the book has helped them understand their son who has PTSD. Friends of veterans who have committed suicide; directors of shelters for the homeless; nurses, priests and social workers who strive to help homeless veterans; and administrators in charge of programs to treat veterans haunted by traumatic experiences, have all been inspired by War’s Over.
Patrick is the author of the award-winning Racing Trilogy, Racing My Father, Flying Change and Racing Time. He grew up the son of the legendary, Hall of Fame steeplechase jockey A. P. “Paddy” Smithwick. Patrick has won awards for the writing of newspaper features, short stories, and magazine pieces while working as a steeplechase jockey and exercise rider of Thoroughbred racehorses on East Coast tracks, and as a Chesapeake Bay waterman, newspaper reporter and English teacher.
Racing My Father: Growing up with a Riding Legend (pub. 2006) is a moving memoir about growing up in the hell-bent-for-leather world of Thoroughbred racing. Patrick tells about a boy coming of age and his deep love for his father.
Flying Change: A Year of Racing and Family and Steeplechasing (pub. 2012) focuses on Patrick’s return to the life of a steeplechase jockey in his 50s. With humor, elegance and introspection, he recalls the difficult road back to athletic fitness … the doubts, joys, and setbacks along the way in his quest to defy the passage of time.
Racing Time: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Liberation (pub. 2019) celebrates Patrick’s life-long friendships with three men—each outspoken, authentic, and a lover of the Thoroughbred horse—taking the reader through the joy of shared youthful experiences, into the camaraderie of adulthood, and ends with the clap of a thundercloud, calling on us all to live life to the fullest.
Patrick has also written two histories: The Art of Healing, Union Memorial Hospital, and Gilman Voices, 1897 – 1997. He holds a B.A. and an M.L.A. from Johns Hopkins University, an M.A. from Hollins College, and an EfM (Education for Ministry) from the University of the South. The author met Ansley, his wife-to-be, at Hollins College. It was love at first sight; they’ve been together since that moment. They live on the farm where Patrick was raised in Monkton, Maryland, and are the parents of three children: Paddy, Andrew and Eliza.
Ansley is the Head of the 156-year-old, all-girls Oldfields School in Glencoe, Maryland, where Patrick teaches three English classes. Ansley and Patrick are the parents of three children: Paddy, Andrew and Eliza.
