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Breaking The Code: A Father's Secret, A Daughter's Journey, And The Question That Changed Everything (2011)

by Karen Fisher-Alaniz(Favorite Author)

3.4 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1402261128 (ISBN13: 9781402261121)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Sourcebooks

review 1: If you've done any work with oral history, the challenges the author had to tackle will be familiar, except she had written letters to prompt, substitute, and stand in for verbal storytelling. As the title indicates, it's a memoir, not only of discovering the history of her father's work during World War II, but of her own journey of understanding and eventual acceptance. His story would have been more complete with additional research, but that was not the intent of the work. It was the story of a family journey, which is always challenging. This work delivered the story that the author wanted and needed to tell with admirable restraint and imaginative use of the letters.
review 2: At his 80th birthday party, Fisher-Alainz's father handed her two notebooks ... moreof letters he wrote to his family during WW2. She's surprised at what she learns about his war - which he'd always told them had been spent behind a desk. Over several months, she transcribed the letters and began meeting him for weekly breakfasts to find out more about his history. Halfway through I lost interest. It's a nice snapshot of one soldier's life and the father-daughter relationships, but it's not riveting to sustain me for a book's length. less

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