I Will Tell No War Stories

When I grew up, World War II was omnipresent and hidden. This was also true of my

father’s time in the Air Force. Like most of his generation, it was a rule with him not to

talk about what he’d seen at war. “You’re not getting any war stories from me,” he’d say.

Cleaning up the old family house the year before he died, I was surprised to find a short

diary of the bombing missions he had flown. Some of the missions were harrowing. I

began to fill in the details, and to be surprised again, this time by a history I thought I

knew.

I Will Tell No War Stories is about undoing the forgetting in our family and in a society

that has hidden the horrors and cataclysm of a world at war. Some part of that forgetting

was necessary for the veterans, otherwise how could they come home, how could they

find peace?

I Will Tell No War Stories is, finally, about learning to live with history, a theme I have

explored in some of my earlier books like In the Memory House and The Same Ax,

Twice. The New York Times called In the Memory House a “wise and beautiful book.” In

another review, the Times said, “The Same Ax, Twice is filled with insight and

eloquence… a memorable, readable, brilliant book on an important subject. It is a book

filled with quotable wisdom.”

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