Chasing Ghosts
A Memoir of a Father, Gone to War
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- US$11.99
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- US$11.99
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"Both a beautifully detailed examination of wartime life and a searingly honest depiction of a fraught father-daughter relationship." —Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Missionaries
When literary biographer and memoirist Louise DeSalvo embarked upon a journey to learn why her father came home from World War II a changed man, she didn't realize her quest would take ten years, and that it would yield more revelations about the man—and herself—and the effect of his military service upon their family than she'd ever imagined. Although DeSalvo at first believes she wants to uncover his story, the story of a man who was no hero but who was nonetheless adversely affected by his military service, she learns that what she really wants is to recover the man that he was before he went away.
As DeSalvo and her father uncover his past piece-by-piece, bit-by-bit, she learns about the dreams of a working-class man who entered the military in the late 1930s during peacetime to better himself, a man who wanted to become a pilot. She learns about what it was like for him to participate in war games in the Pacific prior to the war, and its devastating toll. She learns about what it was like for her parents to fall in love, set up house, marry, and have children during this cataclysmic time. And as the pieces of her father's life fall into place, she finds herself finally able to understand him.
"[An] excellent memoir. Louise DeSalvo remembers her soldier father in a manner both unsparing and elegiac." —Alexandra Styron, author of Steal This Country
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Prolific author/memoirist DeSalvo (Vertigo) focuses her latest work on her father, Louis DeSalvo, a WWII veteran who died in 2005. DeSalvo first takes readers through his early life in North Bergen, N.J., describing his devoted mother and violent, philandering father, both from Italy. In 1935, Louis joined the Navy, hoping to escape his father's temper. He lacked a high school degree, so his dream of becoming a pilot was thwarted, but his knowledge of mechanics led to the job of aviation machinist, and his skills would become even more valuable when he was called back for a second tour of duty in the Admiralties during WWII. After the war, DeSalvo asserts, her father was a different man: angry, easily enraged. The author's relationship with her father was stormy he once came at her with a kitchen knife and she remained mystified as to why he blamed her for the family's many problems (her mother was depressive, her younger sister committed suicide as an adult). Although she describes her father as a harsh man, DeSalvo also unveils his softer side: his love for his grandsons, his charming courtship of her mother, and his loyalty to his family. This painstakingly researched work not only explores a daughter's love for her father but also probes the dire effects of war (and particularly of WWII) on families, exposing the deeper "wounds of the soul" suffered by both soldiers and their loved ones.
