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This is a unique war story, based on more than 350 letters that the author's father wrote to her mother from the front lines in Italy in 1944 and 1945. These are love letters, deeply intimate. While vividly recounting the brutal life of a combat soldier, they also reveal the intense connection between the author's mother and father. Through extensive quotes from the letters, the book conveys in powerful detail what he thought, felt, and experienced as a company commander in combat. Her letters do not survive, but his responses to her show the strength of their relationship. They write about mutual friends, the quotidian details of their lives, the weather, food, the war news. They tease each other. They send each other gifts and photos. They dream about life after the war. Sometimes they quarrel-he worries about money and chides her about her spending habits. She becomes frustrated over irregular and delayed mail and blames him for it. But every letter conveys his love for her, his aching for her, his sense of being with her despite the distance and the war. This is also the story of the war itself, of dangerous night patrols, German artillery, supplies coming to the front by mule, days and days with no sleep, dead and wounded soldiers, German war prisoners, and, finally, victory. This poignant juxtaposition of the personal and the historical, based on a rare quantity of first-hand material, is spellbinding and inspiring.
