All Roads Lead to Rome
Searching for the End of My Father's War
by Bill Thorness
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Pub Date Dec 01 2024 | Archive Date Nov 30 2024
University of Nebraska Press | Potomac Books
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Description
When a slim packet of his father’s letters came to light after his mother’s death, Bill Thorness began a quest to rediscover his father. Thorness traveled to the World War II battlefields where America’s first team of commandos fought. The youngest son of one of those commandos, Thorness gained a sense of the horror his father had kept from his family while standing on the mountain where the First Special Service Force fought. Then, standing on a bridge in Rome, he reflected on the loss his father must have felt in not making it to the end of the campaign to liberate the Eternal City.
In All Roads Lead to Rome Thorness considers his father’s decisive moments in battle and beyond, and how he soldiered on as a disabled veteran through his life, raising a family and succumbing to an early death. Alternating between reimagined battle scenes and present-day travels, Thorness explores World War II and family history, the value and limits of memory, the attitudes of war, and our society’s inadequate understanding and support of combat veterans, who may return with physical and emotional scars that change them deeply.
Thorness steps into his father’s shoes to revisit his story and finish that walk into Rome, weaving an account that is part travelogue, part history, and part memoir about the ravages of war.
Advance Praise
“All Roads Lead to Rome starts as a journey of discovery and becomes one of self-discovery. A masterful accomplishment.”—Steve Olson, author of The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age
“A moving and compelling story about the enduring power of the past. Bill Thorness juxtaposes two Italian journeys—his father’s during the Anzio campaign of World War II and his own retracing of it—to find a parent whose damaged leg disguised deeper wounds. He discovers a war’s lasting consequences.”—Richard White, Margaret Byrne Professor of American History emeritus, Stanford University, and author of Who Killed Jane Stanford?
“All Roads Lead to Rome is a deftly woven history of one man’s attempt to understand his father’s taciturn and damaged life by hiking the route his father’s army commando unit took as it fought its way north from the Anzio beaches to liberate Rome from the Nazis in World War II. A warm memoir and a historical resource, All Roads Lead to Rome stands as a heartfelt attempt to bridge a generation gap and probe the brutal and fiercely debilitating impact of war.”—Kit Bakke, author of Protest on Trial and Miss Alcott’s E-mail
“A touching and outstanding story, All Roads Lead to Rome is Bill Thorness’s journey to understanding his father, which takes us from the farmland of North Dakota to the battlefields of World War II Italy.”—Bill Woon, past executive director of the First Special Service Force Association and son of Force veteran Dave Woon, 2nd Company, 2nd Regiment
“An expansive journey through World War II Italy, All Roads Lead to Rome is a poignant, picturesque memoir of redemption and truth between father and son, past and present.”—Alicia DeFonzo, author of The Time Left between Us
“Any hope that humanity will more quickly move beyond war as a method of conflict resolution will likely come as a result of leaders who, whether personally or peripherally, finally acknowledge and speak to the damaging ramifications of war on present and future generations. Books such as All Roads Lead to Rome are vital for what they can add to this awareness, and it is one of the best books I have read so far on the cross-generational impact of military service, particularly combat.”—Tracy Crow, coeditor of It’s My Country Too: Women’s Military Stories from the American Revolution to Afghanistan
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781640126275 |
| PRICE | $32.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 280 |
