The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War

by Louise Steinman Narrated by Suzanne Toren

Overview

Louise Steinman has published essays and articles in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and Salon. She has also led writing workshops and curates literacy programs. The Souvenir, a powerful, best-selling book, was a featured selection of the Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, and others. Growing up, Louise Steinman never understood the private hell that tormented her father. Years later, among her late parents' belongings, she discovers a metal ammo box. In it are almost 500 letters written by her father to her mother during World War II. It also contains a silk Japanese flag inscribed to Yoshio Shimizu. When she reads the letters, Steinman begins to see what her father experienced in the endless days of combat. She also embarks on a decade-long search to find out who Shimizu was-a search which culminates in a trip to Japan to return his flag. The result is a powerful story of discovery, connection, and reconciliation. Weaving together her father's letters, historical details and the political propaganda of both sides, Steinman creates a narrative that is a unique examination of the personal and universal costs of war.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Exceptional . . . a graceful, understated memoir . . . that draws its strength from the complexities it explores.”
—The New York Times Book Review
 
“Ms. Steinman skillfully weaves her father’s emotional letters into the present-day story line, sensitively taking readers through Norman Steinman’s transformation from naïve American soldier to hardened combat veteran. . . . The Souvenir underscores the indescribable way war affects not only veterans but also their families and future generations.”
—The Dallas Morning News
 
“The book is the story of entwined ‘gifts’ resulting from [a] personal journey—Steinman’s discovery of a side of her father she never expected to share. For many, her account could provide an understanding of how the war changed one generation and shaped the next.”
—Library Journal, starred review
 
“A moving memoir about reconciliation and honor.”
—Publishers Weekly
 
“The Souvenir is a powerful testament that, regardless of time and place, the effect of war on the human spirit remains the same. Steinman’s remarkable discovery shows how war separates our common humanity. It is a journey to repair that broken bond, a journey to know the humanity of those we have made enemies.”
—Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Gone
 
“Partly a detective story, partly a meditation on the legacy of war . . . this is a bold, unusual, and moving book.”
—Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s Ghost
 
“The Souvenir is an intimate and powerful story of the effects of war.”
—James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Father
 
“Luckily for her readers, Ms. Steinman . . . interviewed not only American veterans of the Pacific war, but Japanese veterans as well. In this quest, she discovered more than just her father’s wartime souvenir; she discovered her father’s war and those experiences that shaped the life of her family in the ’50s. . . . The Souvenir is a graceful blend of history, wartime storytelling and investigative reporting that dives deep into the traumatic experiences of war. Military enthusiasts, especially veterans and their families, will find The Souvenir a proactive [and] rewarding read.”
—The Jewish Veteran

APR/MAY 03 - AudioFile

The author, a journalist, remembers her late father as emotionally remote, a characteristic somehow engendered by his war experiences, experiences he chooses to keep to himself. Puzzling. She finds surprisingly eloquent letters he wrote to her mother from the Pacific Theater. Thence begins the quest for the man's inner life that fills the pages of this memoir. Suzanne Toren adopts an approach of Apollonian dignity to the narrative, dispassionate but involved. Thus, she plays against the intense warmth of the story, which is hardly objective reportage. Nonetheless, the book manages to catch her up, and she in turn catches up the listener. Y.R. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170996360
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	04/22/2011
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

From the Prologue: Somewhere at SeaIn January 1944 when my father crossed the Pacific for the first time, he did not know where he was going. He did not know he was headed for New Zealand. He did not know that after a year of training and waiting, first in New Zealand then in New Caledonia, he and his army buddies in the Twenty-fifth Infantry Division would be transported to northern Luzon, the Philippines, where they would sweat out five and a half months of combat.The monotony, the uncertainty of the destination, the hot sun, the loneliness, the roiling sea all took their toll on him. “I’ve never felt so blue. It’s the thought of leaving you. I hope I can get over it soon, because it’s a terrible state of affairs,” he wrote to his wife—my mother—from the confines of a transport ship.As the realization of a long separation sank in—months, possibly years—his mood veered toward panic then settled into depression. Writing letters was his only relief. “Dear Anne,” he wrote home, “I’m sorry that you won’t hear from me for such a long time until you get this letter, but because of the safety precautions and secrecy involved (for our own good), I wasn’t allowed to tell you when I left the States.” To describe his location, he wrote simply “Somewhere at Sea” in the upper right-hand corner of each letter.My father—a graduate of De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx, with a math degree from New York University—was lacking his usual reference points. No Sunday New York Times, no conversations with his parents, no weekly lectures at the 42nd Street branch of the New York Public Library. And the most grievous lack of all—his wife.It was not like the pragmatic father I knew to daydream, sitting motionless, spinning in his imagination every inch of his wife’s body. Her hair. Her smile. The way she wore hats. He composed letters in his mind, wrote them down when the seasickness abated...

Videos