Memory of war always loomed large for Dwight Bogdanovic— after all, his immigrant grandfather volunteered to fight in World War I and his working-class father joined up with the Canadian Army to fight the Nazis early in World War II. Yet it is only when Dwight’s soldier son, Bertrand, is killed under mysterious circumstances in Afghanistan that he really tries to understand why men fight and die. Dwight Bogdanovic enjoyed a golden childhood in his idealized vision of 1950s America—freely riding his bicycle in the streets, pick-up ball games in the park, and earning pocket money by shoveling snow or raking leaves for neighbors—but coming of age proved difficult for him. After dropping out of college during the height of the Vietnam War—and after receiving a medical deferment from the draft—he travels the Midwest selling encyclopedias doorto-door to people who don’t want them, then returns to his hometown of Indianapolis. There he lands a series of temp jobs and hooks up with a hippie girlfriend before meeting the good woman who will become his wife. All seems right again until, one by one, all his beloveds succumb to their own fates—disease, old age, and war. Especially his son, especially war. Dwight struggles to overcome the loss of Bertrand and constantly replays letters from his late son in his head before realizing, with the help of yet another woman in his
life, that the greatest challenge is not merely to survive, but to let go.

ABE AAMIDOR’S short fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The South Carolina Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Prick of the Spindle, The Arkansas Review, Broad River Review, Vermont Literary Review, The Worcester Review and elsewhere. His biography, “Chuck Taylor, All Star: The True Story of the Man behind the Most Famous Athletic Shoe in History,” is published by Indiana University Press