It’s a funny thing about parents. Until we’re grown and maybe  have children of our own, we rarely think about those parents’ lives before our births. I was no exception, until one day I realized my parents had lived very interesting and very difficult, lives. By that time it was too late to ask much about those lives aside from a few things I’d learned, I call it by osmosis. So I’m writing novels based on those few interesting facts.

So here are my dad’s few facts interspersed in tiny nibbles in a made up story based on those fact and a whole log of research. I found several memoirs about the unit my dad served with, the 158th Infantry Regiment. I consulted the Center for Military History and a number of treatises on the Great Depression particularly ones about hobos. I also consulted articles about the U.S. Embassy in Paris starting in 1940.

Caught in the run up to World War II, Connor Conroy considers enlisting, expecting he will go to Europe. Maybe he can protect his sister who’s in Paris with the Foreign Service. But, it’s hard to think about leaving home and family, for another years-long exile. Filled with flashbacks of his travels living off the land and letters to keep him tethered to his family, Connor’s story spans two of America’s most disruptive decades (The economic Depression of the 1930s and World War II of the 1940s) in which Connor finds his most closely-held expectations thwarted.

Oh, my dad never had a sister in the foreign service, but I thought that would make things more interesting.  Here’s a sample chapter.

See Willy See is now available in various e-book formats from Smashwords and in e-book and paperback from Barnes and Noble and Amazon. It’s available from major book distributors.