Letter to My Father

by G. Thomas Couser

Having wounded his father with a hurtful letter when he was twenty-three, Tom Couser felt somewhat responsible for his later mental collapse. When his father died, Tom found personal documents that revealed facets of his father’s life of which Tom had known nothing. Too traumatized to grieve properly, much less to probe his father’s complicated history, Tom boxed the documents and stored them—for over thirty years. When he finally explored his father’s rich legacy, he achieved a belated reconciliation with a man he had not really known.

222 pages, Paperback

Published August 30, 2017

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memoirs always make me introspective but this one more than most. Tom Couser is my mother’s cousin, so reading Letter to my Father was more like mining for family history. Each date and family name made me question who I know (honestly, most of my mom’s cousins are a blur to me, my sister is the one who keeps track) and where my family was during the events of note. For example, a lot happened in 1974, the year my sister was born, and I knew my mom was not near the Couser homes in New England at the time. I savored the few letters from my own grandfather that appear in the story, getting even a glimpse of him before he was a parent himself. Because the family connection was a bit distant (am I a first cousin once removed?) the use of archives—personal letters—had a stronger resonance with me. While not officially an archivist, saving the stories of objects and their documentation is my profession. Seeing the paper trail of museum donors and staff over time tells a fascinating story of who they were and things that were important to them. The thought of a complete collection of letters is invaluable (not to mention some of the household treasures that only got a brief treatment in the text). As a letter writer, I also wonder what my own collection of letters—physical and digital—will reveal one day and if they’ll be saved, savored, or mined. I probably won’t be around to find out.

[Betsy Myers]

I won this book via Goodreads First Reads. I am an ECE Administrator and I look forward to adding this book to our lending library for parents and staff at my school. :)