I am grateful to the Pacific Northwest Writers Association for choosing my memoir All Roads Lead to Rome as a finalist in the category for unpublished works in their annual contest.

In "All Roads Lead to Rome," I cross continents and history to retrace my father’s steps on the battlefields of World War II and consider how learning from significant places, revisiting our history and reckoning with memory can restore a lost bond.

The book is a discovery of my father through his service as a US Army commando in the Italian campaigns in World War II. A North Dakota farmer, he became a member of the First Special Service Force, a storied unit and the first of its kind.

I revisit his battlefields, walking from the Anzio beachhead to the rocky hilltop village where he last fought before being cut down two days before the breakthrough into the Italian capital. And then I finish the trip for him, entering Rome through the ancient city gate and surveying the Tiber River bridges guarded by his unit on the fateful night when the Germans were pushed out of the Eternal City.

I am seeking an agent or a publisher for this memoir that blends battle and history with my modern-day discovery of the places where my father lived and where he fought.