Ripon Public Library

Chasing ghosts, a memoir of a father, gone to war, Louise DeSalvo

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-274)

individual biography

no index present

non fiction

Chasing ghosts

bibliography

915135705

Louise DeSalvo

World War II : the global, human, and ethical dimension

a memoir of a father, gone to war

"Chasing Ghosts describes how, near the end of his life, the daughter of a veteran of World War II comes to terms with her father, emotionally wounded by his military service through the stories he tells her about his childhood, about his military service in the Navy in the late 1930s, and about his wartime experiences and through her research undertaken to understand her father's life in the context of history. Told through the voice of a daughter seeking answers to her father's life, the narrator journeys into her father's history and the context in which it enfolds. She learns that her father's response had been a mixture of rage and silence and she begins to understand why he has chosen her as an object of his abuse. The narrative provides an understanding of working-class World War II veterans who performed the behind-the-scenes work, like the narrator's father's work as an aviation machinist's mate, necessary to waging war--work that was not conventionally heroic or, until recently, considered worthy of historical or cultural attention. By juxtaposing historical moments in her family's and the country's life, Chasing Ghosts engages in the current necessary conversation about the often unrecognized effects of war and its trauma on World War II veterans, and reinterprets the experience of her father and other such veterans in the context of contemporary understanding about the psychic cost of war and its cross-generational impact on families. In the process, the narrator's lack of knowledge is replaced with empathy for what he's experienced and an understanding of his place in history"--, Provided by publisher

Prologue: Flushing out the Enemy -- ONE -- War Stories -- "Join the Navy, See the World" -- The Sea, the Sea -- On the Road to Nowhere, Moving Fast -- Fly Boy -- Man o' War's Man -- Dead as a Doornail -- A Very Smart Ship -- A Flower, A Sunburst, A Star -- The First Death -- Into the Drink -- Trouble Board -- War Games -- When Pigs Can Fly -- TWO -- "The Girl for Me" -- "Of Couse I Will" -- Courtship -- Safe House -- Lifeboat -- THREE -- So Much to Lose, So Much Already Lost -- Magic Bullet -- On the Day I Was Born -- "Hide Your Tears" -- House Hunting -- FOUR -- Secret Code -- Command Center -- The Sailor Who Flew Home on Wings of Air -- A Knock at the Door -- Just a Very, Very Few of the Many, Many Who Have Died -- Rage -- Chasing Ghosts -- Ship's Model -- Mopping Up -- Cargo Cult -- FIVE -- Coming Home -- The Evening News -- The Last Time My Father Almost Died -- Epilogue -- Wearing My Father's Bones