MY FATHER'S WAR: A Memoir

Freelance writer Collins has written a poetic, haunting account of her father's experiences in WWII and their devastating impact on his family. In 1943, Jerry Collins, confident, idealistic and ambitious, left Yale's accelerated wartime program to serve in the elite Marine Corps. Stationed in Okinawa, he witnessed the burning of homes and villages, the pain of dying children and indiscriminate bombings by both sides. When he returned home three years later, wracked by survivor's guilt and nightmares, he had lost his dreams of becoming a chemist. He instead pursued the American dream by becoming a salesman, and failed wretchedly at it. His wife, distraught by her husband's limitations and infidelities, plunged into self-destructive bouts of alcoholism. Only the writer was privy to her father's private burdens; when she was still young, he began to share with her the psychic scars he carried as a survivor of war ("He had brought the war home, where it grew inside him, usurping part of his soul"). While Collins seems convinced that the family's travails can be traced back to her father's three years overseas, her supposition may be a bit simplistic. Jerry's wife emerges from the text as a disturbed, shallow ingrate who craves Coach handbags and Shalimar perfume. Would she have been all that different had her husband been a successful chemist? Nevertheless, the book is a powerful, moving and timely story of one family touched by "the good war's" collateral damage. (May 13)

Forecast:Hopefully this sad, lovely memoir will not be overlooked by reviewers. Children of war veterans will no doubt be drawn to Collins's story.