My Father's Bonus March

In 1932 veterns marched on Washingto to get military bonuses advanced in this horrible economic period. In stead of open arms and help, they got bayonets. Adam Langer give the reader a look at the march through his fathers eyes as the writer interprets. This is a poignant look at the time and a closer look as a son tries to discover more about his father. We learn about Langers family as he learns more about himself. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

This book might well blow your mind, and it will certainly stay with you. Here's the set-up (without spoiling anything, I hope). Adam Langer (the real-life best-selling novelist born and raised in Chicago) lost his 80-year-old father a few years ago. One question that always gnawed at the son was why his father had spent much of his life wanting to write a study about "The Bonus March," a bloody war-benefits protest staged by thousands of disaffected U.S. World War I veterans in Washington, D.C., during the peak of the Depression. Why, the son wonders, was this protest so important to my father that he wanted to write a book about it? And why didn't he write it? Langer the novelist, therefore, hangs up the nonfiction apron and sets out a multi-year journey to learn why. His father had never served in the military and was just a child when the Bonus March took place. So why his father's fascination with The Bonus March? In this remarkable first-person memoir, Langer literally travels all across the country and all across the 20th century (archives, photographs, yellowed newspaper clippings, Department of Defense records, eyewitnesses) trying to find out. I will stop now, because I don't want to give anything away. Suffice it to say that Langer's heart-rending AND heart-wrenching investigation will quite likely make you view your own parents differently, and make you appreciate how special--and indeed mysterious--each of us is. Three specific compliments to Langer are in order. First of all, this is a non-fiction memoir that--somehow, and rather amazingly--reads like a thriller. I read the book in three sittings over 24 hours: once I had to stop because the reading experience was too intense; the second time I stopped because it was 2:00am and I had go to work the next day; and the third sitting was when I finished the book, immediately after getting home from work. Second, Langer's gifts as a novelist really pay off here. Although "My Father's Bonus March" is nonfiction, Langer is able to weave together all manner of Proustian sensations (bits of songs, fleeting visual impressions, quickly quoted dialogues) to make it seem that you, the reader, are along with him on his heart-pounding, novel-like quest. Finally, this book really makes the reader think about what a fascinating if fragile organism any family is, particularly as it passes across continents and down generations, changing in someways and remaining the same in others. I think that this beautiful book will comfort, and also trigger thought, in anyone who has lost a parent and wished they had known that parent better. Highest recommendation.

Adam Langer's father - a member of the "Greatest Generation" - was always a mystery to his younger son. Seymour Langer was a radiologist in Chicago for forty years, as well as a husband, father, and friend to many. He grew up on the old West Side of Chicago, a son of Jewish immigrants. He was one of many who made successful lives from poor beginnings. But Seymour Langer had a dream, an ambition, a "something" - to write a book about the Bonus March, a little remembered event during the later years of the Hoover Administration, continuing on into the Roosevelt years. The Bonus Marchers were a large group of soldiers from the "Great War" (WW1), who had been promised "bonuses" after their war duty. These bonuses were not exactly huge amounts, but to the former soldiers, now suffering in the early years of the Depression, they offered some hope from the poverty they were mired in. Thousands of soldiers got together and marched on Washington in an unsuccessful attempt to claim what they were promised. Seymour Langer died a few years ago, in his early 80's. Adam Langer, the author of three fabulous novels set in Chicago and New York, chose to write about his father and his obsession with the Bonus March. Where did his father's interest in the Bonus Marchers come from? Adam thought that maybe Seymour's father had been a WW1 soldier - family lore had him as a mule skinner - and that Sam Langer might have had contact with the Bonus Marchers. Why didn't Seymour Langer ever attempt to investigate his subject and write on it? Adam's book about his father is especially interesting to children of these "Greatest Generation" dads as we try to understand our fathers. Seymour Langer was not a soldier in WW2 because of congenital hip problems, but he was a member of the "Greatest Generation" just the same. Many of us 40, 50, and 60 year olds are left with memories of our fathers, but little substantive knowledge of their inner lives. These were men who grew up in the Depression and fought our last "good war". They returned from active duty, married, produced families, and went to work. And came home from work on a daily basis, and then returned to work the following day. Most of these men were enigmas to their children. And, I've begun to think lately, they were enigmas to themselves. Great book and great writing.