ABSTRACT
This book is, in itself, a letter. It is not a traditional letter that begins with “Dear so-and-so.” It is instead a letter written to a distant uncle of mine, William “Billy” Cover, who was killed fighting in World War I. Sixty years after he died, I met him for the first time. He came to life one day when my teenage self was rummaging through my mother’s bookshelves and happened upon his makeshift diary. The volume, with its darkened pages, didn’t look like a diary. It looked like what it was: an old mass-produced book of poems that smelled of dust. In its page margins my great-great-uncle had written notes to himself after he’d enlisted. Sometimes he wrote about liking a particular poem, but mostly he wrote about feeling lonely and missing home.
