Discovered by Teresa Irish in her father’s Army trunk shortly after his death in 2006, the letters and photographs in this book are a personal record of his experience as a soldier of World War II. Selected from the nearly 1,000 letters addressed to his parents and to the sweetheart who would later become his wife, this firsthand account through the eyes, heart and words of one soldier mirrors the journeys of many who served in WWII. At every opportunity, Bud poured out his thoughts and feelings in these letters, all amidst reassuring words to loved ones a world away. From lonesome, moonlit nights listening to the Hit Parade, to the foxholes and front lines in Germany where he would earn the Silver Star and the Purple Heart, to correspondence from the heartbroken mothers whose sons had died by his side, “A Thousand Letters Home” is a moving and historic story of life and loss, hope and perseverance, unwavering faith and true love.

"I've spent every day of the last seven years regretting mine: he left, and I didn't follow. A thousand letters went unanswered, my words like petals in the wind, spinning away into nothing, taking me with them. But now he's back"--Page 4 of cover.

"If walking is an option, then Rudra will start right away, but Maya stays around three thousand kilometres far, so he books a train ticket instead. It will kill him to wait anymore and he is way too late already. Isn’t he? 14 years since the two childhood best friends Maya & Rudra separated, he ignored her and her 1200 letters; until today, when his mother gave it all to him, safely kept for this moment. Will Maya forgive him? Will he be able to confess his love to her? "

A family drama written through letters.

What is the difference between writing a novel about the Holocaust and fabricating a memoir? Do narratives about the Holocaust have a special obligation to be 'truthful'--that is, faithful to the facts of history? Or is it okay to lie in such works? In her provocative study A Thousand Darknesses, Ruth Franklin investigates these questions as they arise in the most significant works of Holocaust fiction, from Tadeusz Borowski's Auschwitz stories to Jonathan Safran Foer's postmodernist family history. Franklin argues that the memory-obsessed culture of the last few decades has led us to mistakenly focus on testimony as the only valid form of Holocaust writing. As even the most canonical texts have come under scrutiny for their fidelity to the facts, we have lost sight of the essential role that imagination plays in the creation of any literary work, including the memoir. Taking a fresh look at memoirs by Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, and examining novels by writers such as Piotr Rawicz, Jerzy Kosinski, W.G. Sebald, and Wolfgang Koeppen, Franklin makes a persuasive case for literature as an equally vital vehicle for understanding the Holocaust (and for memoir as an equally ambiguous form). The result is a study of immense depth and range that offers a lucid view of an often cloudy field.