Like so many descendants of “the Greatest Generation,” Leigh Callan first read her father’s wartime letters after his death. 

Thus began the long adventure of discovery and self-discovery resulting in Here’s My Heart,

an intergenerational story which brings together selected letters and photographs with the history of her father’s unit and campaigns, excerpts from his memoir of the war years, and her mother’s recent reflections on her experience as a young war bride.

All combine with Leigh’s personal voice as she reflects on the creative process and recounts an “In His Footsteps” tour to Europe, where Leigh and her brother trace the path of their father’s war, informed and inspired by the “word pictures” he painted for their mother so many years ago.

In so doing, Leigh Callan, too, offers a classic tale of voyage and discovery that will surely be familiar today to the friends and relatives of former generations who discover eyewitness accounts of war—be they by V-mail or E-mail—in closets, attics, garages, or hard drives, and ask themselves: What did my loved ones do in the war, and how can I preserve this personal account in honor of their memory and for the sake of future generations?

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