Lee Mandel is a physician who has recently retired from the United States Navy after nearly thirty years of service. He has had multiple assignments, including tours as Senior Medical Officer aboard three US Navy aircraft carriers. He is also a published historian with special interests in military history and also the health history of US presidents. Moryak is his first novel and it won the Grand Prize for fiction in 2010 at the Santa Fe Creative Arts Council literary competition. His newest work- a biography of the early years of the first Jewish chaplain ever assigned to the United States Marine Corps, where he took part in the battle for Iwo Jima, was released by Pelican Publishing in January of 2015.
