Through a Long Absence

A 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Silver Winner for BiographyAgainst the backdrop of World War II, Joy Passanante s touching new book, Through a Long Absence: Words from My Father s Wars, is the saga of a wartime medical unit, a passionate long-distance love, the making of a surgeon, and two first-generation American families. Told through her father s eyes drawing on hundreds of his letters to his beloved wife, his four-volume wartime diary, and his paintings Passanante masterfully recreates his wartime journey and physically retraces his steps more than sixty years later in an attempt to understand a time in her parents lives that they d spoken about very little. More than just a World War II story, Through a Long Absence delves into one man s past to explore his personal wars: a stint as a child bootlegger, a marriage between newlyweds separated by continents and strained by years apart, and his struggle late in life with his own mind. The narrative propels readers to surprising places from a freight train through North Africa to an underground St. Louis distillery during Prohibition, from a young couple s forbidden courtship to the chaos of surgical tents under fire in Normandy, from an underground trove of priceless artwork hidden by the Nazis to Jewish New Year services in Paris a week after its liberation. Through a Long Absence is a love story, an honest look into one man s life, and a daughter s moving quest to rediscover her father years later through his own words.