Voyage: A Memoir of Love, War, and Ever After

by Catherine Underhill Fitzpatrick

A WORLD AT WAR . . . A lonely sailor without a sawbuck to spare. A gorgeous socialite on the home front. Letters soaked in longing. Secrets taken to the grave. Easy births. Hard deaths. And dogs —dogs aplenty. They say love conquers all, but will bonds forged by Lt. N. Robert Underhill and Miss Merrilee Meier during World War II survive the peaks and valleys of peacetime? Across their 58-year-marriage, Bob and Merrilee confront holiday fiascoes and funeral foul-ups, windless regattas and catastrophic tornadoes, a medical crisis and a financial reversal. But rearing six kids is the ultimate test of a love that began with a letter.

290 pages, Paperback

Published August 22, 2017

About the author

Catherine Underhill Fitzpatrick grew up in suburban St. Louis, the second of six children. After she graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism, her newspaper career included feature writing positions at metro dailies in Hannibal, St. Louis, and Milwaukee.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Catherine was in Manhattan to cover New York Fashion Week for Wisconsin’s largest newspaper. At first word of the terrorist attacks, she rushed to Ground Zero and filed award-winning eyewitness reports. A description of her reportage is included with accounts of other reporters and photographers in Running Toward Danger (2002, Rowman & Littlefield). A front page of the newspaper edition containing one of her 9/11 dispatches was among those memorialized in Washington D.C.’s Newseum. Her book-length account of her harrowing experiences that week has been accessioned into the State Historical Society of Missouri archives.

Catherine’s articles, stories, and essays have appeared in numerous newspapers, literary reviews, magazines, and anthologies. Her debut novel, A Matter of Happenstance, is a four-generation family saga that explores the power of personal character over coincidence. A follow-up novel, Going on Nine, is a coming-of-age story told by a young girl in 1956 and, alternately, by the mature woman she is today. Her third book is a family memoir, Voyage: A Memoir of Love, War, and Ever After. And her latest book-length work is the memoir Recorder of Deeds, Terrorism and Trauma: A Journalist's Life-Changing Choice on 911. All are available on www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com.

Catherine is a former board member of the TallGrass Writers Guild and an award-winning member of the Florida Writers Association and the Colorado Authors League. She and her husband, Dennis, live in Denver, CO. They have two daughters, two sons-in-law, and three grandchildren..

Reviews

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book on vacation. It is a story of letters between the authors parents prior to their marriage during the end of WW2. The man is in the US Navy Reserves but is an engineer on a boat called a minesweeper. The letters are about his experiences in the boat and the challenges of trying to get married ins war time setting. The author interspersed updates of family life post marriage throughout the chronologically ordered letters. The book covers a span of about 60 years. A pretty quick read.