Happily, Utne Reader has posted the first chapter of the book online:

 Is it possible to miss someone you’ve never known? The Beauty of What Remains (She Writes Press, 2015), by Susan Johnson Hadler, is a memoir about discovering missing members of a family and then bringing them back together — all while traveling through midwestern America, France and Germany to do it. This excerpt, which details the beginning of Hadler’s life and her father’s death during World War II, is from Chapter 1, “Questions.”  Read more...

David Abrams of The Quivering Pen, a book blog, published a story I wrote about writing my story.  It begins:  “I knew I had a story but I had no words.”  

http://davidabramsbooks.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-veterans-day-story-susan-johnson.html

Susan reads from her book on The Author’s Corner.  Type her name in search and click:   http://www.authorscorner.org/search-books/?q=Susan+hadler

“Parts of Hadler’s family tree was shrouded in darkness.  When she was only a few months old, she lost her father at the end of World War II to a mine explosion, an event that so shattered her mother that she refused to talk to her children about him, instead starting a new life and family by marrying again.  Hadler’s search for her father as an adult, a journey that took her to the last places on earth that he walked, serves as a prelude in this meditative memoir to her quest to discover what happened to her mother’s estranged sisters.  What she discovers is a legacy of loss and mental illness, with repercussions for the generations that followed.  Her years as a psychotherapist are evident in her measured, sympathetic treatment of the struggles faced by those in the family who used silence to cover tragedy.  Both an exploration of loss and a celebration of discovering connections, The Beauty of What Remains is a moving account of one woman’s efforts to make her family whole.” –Booklist  Read more...