The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War | 
| Author: Louise Steinman
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 976487
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2nd
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 300
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 1556437013
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5425991092
EAN: 9781556437014
ASIN: 1556437013
Publication Date: March 18, 2008
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Product Description
Louise Steinman’s American childhood in the fifties was bound by one unequivocal condition: “Never mention the war to your father.” That silence sustained itself until the fateful day Steinman opened an old ammunition box left behind after her parents’ death. In it she discovered nearly 500 letters her father had written to her mother during his service in the Pacific War and a Japanese flag mysteriously inscribed to Yoshio Shimizu. Setting out to determine the identity of Yoshio Shimizu and the origins of the silken flag, Steinman discovered the unexpected: a hidden side of her father, the green soldier who achingly left his pregnant wife to fight for his life in a brutal 165-day campaign that changed him forever. Her journey to return the “souvenir” to its owner not only takes Steinman on a passage to Japan and the Philippines, but also returns her to the age of her father’s innocence, where she learned of the tender and expressive man she’d never known. Steinman writes with the same poignant immediacy her father did in his letters. Together their stories in The Souvenir create an evocative testament to the ways in which war changes one generation and shapes another.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 With all the rave reviews.. June 27, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
You see all the reviews having 5 stars out of 5 stars--I couldn't bring myself to agree. This book starts being really quite good--it drew me in--but then it started to dddddddrrrrrraaaaaaaaggggggggg. I put it down for a while and tried again (I did this 3 times) when I decided to give it up for good. I think it could have been better. :(
A Moving Memoir June 30, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Louise Steinman has hit it out of the park with this wonderful, moving memoir about her father, Norman Steinman, his war experiences, and the way those experiences shaped his life--and his relationships with his family. It is also about Ms. Steinman's own odyssey in experiencing her father's war, through reading hundreds of her father's war-time letters discovered after her parents' deaths, talking to other Pacific War veterans, and visiting long-forgotten battlefields in the Philippines. Ms. Steinman eventually makes a special journey to Japan to visit the family of a long-dead Japanese soldier. It involves a simple errand: she needs to give something back...
Ms. Steinman shows that the scars of war run deep and the impacts are felt through succeeding generations. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
AN EXCELLENT READ AND A WORK VERY WELL DONE! June 6, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Like so many in my generation, the author, like the rest of us, really had no clue as to what made her father tick. These men, and women, of the "Greatest Generation" were a different breed. I had to blink twice when the author described her father, his attitudes, work ethic, treatment of his family and on and on. She could have well been describing my own father.
The author, after her father's death, discovers a box of letters written to his wife (the author's mother) during the war. Her father fought in the Pacific, taking part in some of its most brutal of battles. Amongst the letters, in an envelope, was a Japanese Flag, a "souvenir flag" which her father had sent home. The flag was of the type carried by many Japanese soldiers, which was a sort of good luck piece. The story is basically Ms. Steinman's search for the family of the soldier whose body it was taken from and a story of Ms. Steinman's search for her father, i.e. who really was her father, and how had the war changed him?
Now I will be honest, there were parts of the book that disturbed me. I am not all that certain if the author ever did have a clue as to what made her father the man he was and how the war truly affected him. The author never actually says it, but after reading her description of her father, which gave us some idea of the kind of man he was, there is really no doubt where he got the flag, and how he got it. He did not seem the type of man who would simply pick up a flag off any old dead body and keep it. While this falls into the realm of speculation, I think it probably would have been better if the author had faced reality. Be that as it may, the author did quite a good job with her research and I certainly admire her objectives.
The book is well written, easy to read, and quite informative. Like another reviewer here, I have the feeling the author actually found out more about herself than she did of her father, and that is actually a very good thing. I do recommend this one highly. You certainly will be richer for having read it.
D. Blankenship
Beautiful story, beautifully written June 11, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
A page turner, I could hardly put it down. Moving and poignant. Through reading about "the war" of the author's father, I learned a lot about my own father and "his war". He too faught with the 25th Division at Balete Pass in 1945, earning a combat intantryman badge and purple heart. He has rarely spoke of his experience and after reading this book, I better understand why. The Souvenir is a must read for anyone whose father fought in "The Pacific War". Thank you Ms. Steinman, The Souvenir is truly a gift.
The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War September 3, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have just finished reading Ms. Steinman's THE SOUVENIR, and through her skill and persuasion, her souvenir has now become "my" souvenir too. I find myself thinking about her journey as a daughter as well as the unspeakable journeys our fathers, brothers, and sons (now daughters too) have made in times of war.
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