A lovely tribute to a father from his son that has limited appeal to those outside the Bradshaw clan.
An eclectic collection of letters from a sailor to his family during and after World War II.
While serving as a sailor in the U.S. Merchant Marine Corps during World War II, Frank B. Bradshaw Jr. faithfully wrote his mother and father, keeping them abreast of his travels and safety. In his first book, Robert W. Bradshaw, Frank’s son, has collected more than three dozen of those letters, from December 1944 to August 1946. The tone of the letters is set immediately; in December 1944, Frank expressed his regret that he didn’t come home for Christmas, an example of the closeness of the Bradshaw family that comes through in every epistle. Sometimes the letters are thrilling, portals into a historically tumultuous time. Frank chillingly describes the “cold-blooded slaughter” of Ukrainians by German soldiers, a vignette of the many horrors on display during the war. While touring Germany, he marveled at both the beauty of the country and the ruin brought to it by battle. “Hamburg was hit the hardest of any city I’ve seen. In some places, there is not so much as a wall standing for miles.” In August 1945, he first communicated the rumors he had heard that Japan was considering surrender and that the end of the war might finally be at hand. Frank’s correspondence also serves collectively as a kind of travelogue, documenting his impressions of locales that must have seemed exotic to a 19-year-old from Memphis. He visited New York City, Panama, London, Cuba, and many more cities and marveled at all the cultural variations. The common theme of the letters seems to be a persistent homesickness and a loving devotion to his family. While always charming, this particular collection will likely interest those who either knew or are related to Frank—the reader looking for fresh historical revelations will be disappointed. Another drawback: much of Frank’s writing is devoted to descriptions of quotidian matters. He provides a running assessment, often replete with detailed menus, of the meals he ate. The editor ends the book with three brief conclusions largely concerned with his view of the connection between God and science; these are difficult to comprehend and bear no obvious connection to the letters.
A lovely tribute to a father from his son that has limited appeal to those outside the Bradshaw clan.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4917-7185-3
Page Count: 92
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Dec. 9, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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