front cover of Full Fathom Five
Full Fathom Five
A Daughter's Search
Mary Lee Coe Fowler
University of Alabama Press, 2008
One woman’s quest for knowledge of her father lost at sea

Mary Lee Coe Fowler was a posthumous child, born after her father, a submarine skipper in the Pacific, was lost at sea in 1943. Her mother quickly remarried into a difficult and troubled relationship, and Mary Lee’s biological father was never mentioned. It was not until her mother died and Mary Lee was a middle-aged adult that she set out to learn not only who her father was, but what happened to him and his crew, and why—and also to confront why she had shied away from asking these questions until it was nearly too late.
 
Fowler searched through old ships’ logs, letters, and naval communiqués; visited submarine museums, the Naval Academy, and other pertinent sites; interviewed old friends and crew members who knew her dad and mom or served concurrently; and slowly reconstructed the world in which they lived. Beautifully written, Fowler’s memoir reveals what she eventually learned: of the perils and harships of submarine service in wartime, of the tragic irony of how her father’s sub was probably lost, and of the long-term damage experienced by the families of those who do not come home from war.
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front cover of Ordinary Trauma
Ordinary Trauma
A Memoir
Jennifer Sinor
University of Utah Press, 2017
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front cover of When is Daddy Coming Home?
When is Daddy Coming Home?
An American Family during World War II
Richard Carlton Haney
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2024
New paperback edition of a top-selling wartime memoir

World War II was coming to a close in Europe and Richard Haney was only four years old when the telegram arrived at his family's home in Janesville, Wisconsin. That moment, when Haney learned of his father's death in the final months of fighting, changed his and his mother's lives forever.

In this emotionally powerful book, Haney, now a professional historian, explores the impact of war on an American family. Unlike many of America's 183,000 World War II orphans, Richard Haney has vivid memories of his father. He skillfully weaves together those memories with his parents' wartime letters and his mother's recollections to create a unique blend of history and memoir. Through his father's letters he reveals the war's effect on a man who fought in the Battle of the Bulge with the 17th Airborne but wanted nothing more than to return home, a man who expressed the feelings of thousands when he wrote to his wife, "I've seen and been through a lot but want to forget it all as soon as I can." Haney illuminates life on the home front in small-town America as well, describing how profoundly the war changed such communities. At the same time, his memories of an idyllic family life make clear what soldiers like Clyde Haney felt they were defending.

With "When Is Daddy Coming Home?", Richard Haney makes an exceptional contribution to the literature on the Greatest Generation - one that is both devastatingly personal and representative of what families all over America endured during that testing time. No one who reads this powerful story will come away unmoved.

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