This book is a work of fiction based on facts extracted from my memories and family stories and mixed with research. Let me try and sort through which is which, if such a thing is truly possible.
I was born after WWII, in 1949, and grew up during the 1950s in the northern suburbs of Detroit, a city segregated by both race and ethnicity. In Hamtramck, the shop and street signs were in Polish, and in Oak Park, they were in Hebrew. Eight Mile Road, before it was made famous by Eminem, served as the dividing line between black and white families. My neighborhood was close to Twelve Mile Road. It was a neighborhood of European immigrants and folks who had relocated from the South for jobs in the thriving auto industry.
Detroit in those days was a cultural olio. Many of the labels folks placed on one another in those days (DP, Polack, Jap, Kraut) were not necessarily used with the same degree of malice we associate with those terms today. Today, these terms are no longer acceptable. They reflect a past era, and they need to remain there.
Language, like society, is constantly evolving. It was in the mid-1980s when I heard a new term, “posttraumatic stress disorder,” used to describe vets overcoming the stress of battle. I remember the day and where I was standing. I remember repeating the phrase aloud several times and then thinking to myself, “Wow, there’s a term for that?”
The author’s father, Lt. Wallace Scott Holbrook, beside a Sherman tank, the Second Army of the United States, 12th Armored Division
The character of Jack is based on my father, Lt. Wallace Scott Holbrook. He served as a tank commander in the 12th Armored Division of the Second Army United States in the European Theater of World War II. He received multiple Purple Hearts and the Silver Star. After I was born, he was recalled to serve in Korea, where he received more citations for bravery, including a Bronze Star with a few clusters. The symptoms of his posttraumatic stress disorder lessened as the years wore on, but until he died at sixty-five, he would occasionally kick his way out of a troubled sleep or bolt from his chair and yell. He was buried in Arlington Cemetery in 1991.
The author’s mother, Suzanne McNeal Holbrook, with Schlitzie
Lila is very loosely based on my own mother, a college graduate who endured merciless teasing about her degree. Brilliant, she struggled in a changing but still stifling era for women. I have to add that my father evolved in his view of women and education over the years, happily celebrating my graduation years later from the same college my mother attended, now called the University of Mount Union. My childhood idol really was Nancy Drew. I’d never met a woman so independent, with her own roadster and no one telling her what to do. I wanted to be like that.
The fictional character of Inga was inspired by a friend from elementary school, an immigrant from Germany via Canada. Monica Holtzer, wherever you are, I remember you as a very nice person, indeed. And I remember one afternoon when our fathers met over maps in the living room. Every other detail about Inga and her family is fiction.
No soldier serves alone. Soldiers take their families with them, through war and peace, and sometimes, tragically, through the separation of death. A young man, orphaned by the suicide of his veteran father, did live in our basement for a year until he graduated and joined the service. I don’t know where life took him afterwards. Other than that, the character of Frank is pure fiction.
I chose the winter of 1954 for this story because it was the climax of the McCarthy era, a time of simmering fear and suspicion. The enemy was everywhere, Nazis, commies, the Bomb. Fear permeated our libraries, our schools, our military, our political institutions. The first Detroit Auto Show after WWII happened that year on February 20, and on March 9, Edward R. Murrow released a fateful analysis of the McCarthy hearings on CBS. For narrative purposes, in this fictional account of the time, these two events take place in the same week, but in reverse order. That year, the Red Wings went on to win the Stanley Cup, two-toned cars revolutionized the American ride, and on June 9 of that year, Joseph N. Welch poked a pin in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s swell of influence by asking him, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” These facts, among others, I found through research.
Countries advertising in National Geographic really did send free travel brochures and maps to travel-hungry kids who sent in self-addressed stamped envelopes, and I had quite a collection. Today I can say I have visited over forty countries and counting.
What I have learned through all this is that you will never understand your parents until much later, niceness is worth defending with ferocity, and maybe most importantly, wishes really can come to life.
Sara Holbrook