This Memorial Day, Resolve to Deepen Family Connections
My book talks have carried a common discussion thread
I’ve now said this line a dozen times at events: It is so gratifying to have my book and its ideas in front of an audience of readers. Talking about “All Roads Lead to Rome” at bookstores, libraries and community centers is truly a gift that comes wrapped with a sense of wonder.
These book talks have been not so much a presentation as a discussion, either during the talk or after, while signing books or greeting people. I welcome the dialogue and want to do more of it. To that end I’m planning a series of events focused on family history to hopefully take place this fall.
Meanwhile, if you are in the Seattle area, please try to attend my upcoming talk at the excellent Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, June 16, 7 p.m. Please RSVP if you can.
As Memorial Day approaches, I am tying the gratitude for my encounters with readers to the significance of the connections being made.
I am regularly reminded of a universal theme in my book, which I always bring up in my talks: the soldiers in our lives never talked about their war. They might have told about their service, but few battle stories have been shared willingly with loved ones.
What they don’t say, and what we can never learn, is how their war truly affected them.
Repeatedly in my research, travels and writing I tried to come to grips with that idea. Often I ended up writing thoughts like this:
“I became certain that part of my father remained in Anzio, crushed among the scrabbled slit trenches along the Mussolini Canal, cast echoing like a call to a dying comrade through the stunted trees clinging to Monte la Difensa, or smeared red beneath a mule’s hoof in the town square of bomb-ravaged Colleferro. He would have to leave it there, because carrying it home would have been madness.”
A woman at one of my presentations was more connected to the story than most of the audience. She too had been intrigued by the unspoken events of her father’s battles. She too had researched war history. She too had traveled back to where her dad had fought—in Germany—and had stood at the gates of a town that his unit had liberated. She too tried to see it through his eyes. She too, as I said to her, should write a book.
So many others have mentioned their untold family tales. I feel strongly that we should not let these stories pass out of our lives.
The presence of my family has also been a blessing at these events. My sister’s book club friends said they could hear her speaking when I was giving my talk. A member of our family’s next generation said hearing the stories about my dad opened her eyes to a person she never really knew existed. When I heard that, I thought, well, my work here is done.
But of course it isn’t. Every soldier’s family deserves to better know their loved one, and if my work can nudge a few people onto a path to deepening their family stories, I want to do it.
Memorial Day is just a brief moment in time. There are 364 additional days each year where life, love, memories, communication and discovery can happen.
Many thanks to folks who’ve helped me put on my events, including Tom Nissley, Dominic Smith, Juliet Patterson, Dr. Patrick Henry, the PNA and the many bookstore people who have hosted the talks. And family and friends who have helped to promote the events as well as taking a seat and coming on the ride with me.
Here is a video of my talk at Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis: