When I was in the fourth grade, we had a map of Vietnam on our kitchen wall. When my mother received an airmail letter, she would walk to the map and move one of the stickpins to a new location to see if one of her brothers was in harm’s way in some new hot spot or battle. I spent a lot of time worrying about that map. I had five uncles in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. Looking back, I guess it is a bit unusual for a girl of nine or 10 to write letters to her uncles in Vietnam, in Thailand, in Cambodia. Even then, I knew that words could make one feel better. I wrote about ice-skating at the park on a cold Iowa Saturday. I wrote about school, basketball games, and the books I was reading. My letters were written in wide, awkward printing on little girl stationary. My uncles wrote back and thanked me for writing.

Several years ago, one of those uncles wrote a line at the bottom of his Christmas card. It said, “Someday I want to sit down and tell you what it was like to be a young man going off to war.” I taped that card over my desk and began to imagine their voices. Over the next years, I read hundreds of letters that my mother and my grandfather had saved from the boys, spanning many years. With the help of a Jerome Foundation Grant and a Loft McKnight grant, I visited several of the men in Mississippi, Alaska, and South Dakota and interviewed them about their experiences. I recalled stories from my childhood. They filled in the details. Some preferred not to talk about it; others felt like it had released a great burden.

I dedicate this book to those voices, to my family, and every voice calling out at times of war: “I miss you. I love you. I wish I was home.”