I have finished reading my mother’s great novel Poppa’s War. One is already predisposed to like an author, I suppose, without being related to them by birth. Either by word of mouth, reputation, or perhaps an intriguing title is enough to cause us to choose one author over another, zero sum. Rarely does one come to a book without preexisting feelings. Is this enough to shape our enjoyment of a book?

Perhaps. But there are other parts of judgment that make one feel they are on much firmer ground. Enough to make me confident to call this an amazing work of art, which is a triumph all its own, without feeling particularly biased in my opinion. It is crafted with painstaking, and exquisite detail, alive with vivid description. If the book were a ballet it would alternate between slow and fast movements through a shifting landscape. Each step is built upon the next. The message is clear and unmistakable. Something important is happening here and the details are where we must look to find the answers.

Life at the time (the 1940s) was far more involved in the minutiae, less automated than our responses and feelings are today. Washing dishes was then an experience. Today it is a simple task, pushing a button before you go to bed. You are there with Alicia every step of the way. This is life, the way it is truly lived and experienced, and it breathes across the page. There is an eternity found within the fleeting moment that most of us overlook but does not escape her inspired prose. This is what you look for, but rarely find in a novel, when the ordinary reveals its sacred and lyrical quintessence, and transcends words themselves.

I find myself, returning and retracing these steps to find deeper connections within the rich tapestry. It works like the movement of involuntary memory, coming alive in ways we don’t initially understand but discover later on there was a profound wisdom to be found in the trace. No single element should be overlooked or lost, for it is within the whole that we find its true meaning. Something in life demands transcendence, love, sexual awakening, the transformation of adolescence to adulthood, family, community, country. The tragedy is not that these things fall apart but that we are unable to realize how strong those bonds are, too late to save some of us in time. But, like a solemn prayer, the book insists they must survive and outlast us in another way.

In this, the book reminds me so much of Proust, not in terms of style or similarity of prose, but in the way it evokes within the reader the experience of being fully conscience. A story that is truly a poem.

On Sunday, May 15, we honor this great achievement as a loving family at the book launch party, appropriately held at the Museum of Natural History in Murfreesboro, Tennessee beginning at 5 pm. I am her son. I am proud of her. But my respect for this novel, Poppa’s War, and all her year’s of hard work, dedication, inspiration, genius and insight, is from one professional to another. From this book, I learned more about writing. This is my greatest takeaway and gift fom a story that will now live on inside my heart.