The Box from Braunau

As a child, Jan Elvin thought very little about the tin box her father brought home from World War II. What she would soon learn was that the box had been a gift from an inmate at a German slave labor camp. Her discovery would start her on a long journey to uncover some of the fascinating and horrifying history surrounding the War, as well as a search to understand the man still haunted by its memories.

The Box from Braunau is both a daughter's emotional memoir of the unraveling and healing of a father-daughter relationship damaged by the ghosts of war, and a chronicle of a war veteran whose return to civilian life was marred by nightmares of combat and concentration camps. We follow the lives of journalist Bill Elvin and his daughter through excerpts from the riveting diary he kept during the war and private letters and newspaper articles he wrote as a journalist on his return. We follow him from his first days on the battlefield as a lieutenant in Patton's Army to his days at the Ebensee concentration camp, where he witnessed first-hand the prisoners' sufferings brought about by Nazi atrocities. We gain a new understanding of the War and its effects on the men who fought it.

Featuring exclusive interviews with family members and fellow soldiers, as well as with survivors of the camps, The Box from Braunau is an illuminating look at war through the eyes of one family. It is published by AMACOM.

The book has a detailed website which includes an excerpt and the table to contents.

Available from:
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