My dad has written a book to help me, my sister, and my cousins locate ourselves in the paths between lives, to know our place, the vows that have been sworn and the words that have been spoken. It is a precious opportunity to commune with the dead and lean on the fence of history – to be inspired, but also to be chastened and formed. It is a chance literally to remember, not only in the sense of recalling lost memories but to re-member the family, to be bound up in a community of members that make a claim on me. Here I can let go of the world and find home, and have a story to tell my sons when they ask me . . . 

“Dad, where do I come from?”