One Thousand Miles: Following My Father's WWII Footsteps
World War Two shaped Matt Matthews even though he was born twenty years after it ended. As a kid, he was afraid he’d have to do what his father did in the 106th Infantry Division in the Battle of the Bulge. As a young adult, he was afraid he wouldn’t. If his father’s silence about war and being a POW said it all, what did it say? That silence and Matthews’ efforts to fill in the blanks molded his evolving definition of manhood and efforts to influence and love his own three sons.
In the summer of 2011, Matthews, his wife, and three boys traced his late father’s WWII footsteps the thousand or so miles from where he was captured in Germany during the Battle of the Bulge to the Clyde River in Glasgow, upstream from where he and 10,000 other seasick American GIs arrived on the RMS Aquitania. Sixty-seven years after Bill’s journey, the Matthewes discover on theirs stellar moments of coming to terms with personal relationships and spiritual insights about battle, loss, and the overlooked graces of daily life.
About Matt Matthews (Greenville, South Carolina Author)
Matt Matthews grew up in Hampton, VA, and has served pastorates in Presbyterian Church (USA) congregations in Arkansas, Virginia, and Greenville, South Carolina. His novel Mercy Creek (Hub City Press/2011) won the SC Arts Commission First Novel Prize and other awards. A memoir about his father, One Thousand Miles: Following My Father's WWII Footsteps, was published by Agenda Books in 2017. He's written and produced two plays, a children's book (Fritz & Christine and Their Very Nervous Parents [Avendia Books/2010]), a few CDs of original music (check out Rise of Quite A View on Amazon or CDBaby), and a thousand+ sermons.
He occasionally updates a webpage at MattMatthewsCreative.Com and will never skydive.
