All Roads Lead to Rome: Searching for the End of My Father’s War

by Bill Thorness (signed by the author)

(Potomac Books, hardcover, 2024)

"A moving and compelling story about the enduring power of the past. Bill Thorness juxtaposes two Italian journeys--his father's during the Anzio campaign of World War II and his own retracing of it--to find a parent whose damaged leg disguised deeper wounds. He discovers a war's lasting consequences."--Richard White, Margaret Byrne Professor of American History emeritus, Stanford University, and author of Who Killed Jane Stanford?

What happens when a seasoned journalist and travel writer takes on his most challenging assignment yet--crossing not just continents but also history--by retracing his father's steps on the battlefields of Italy in World War II? When a slim packet of his father's letters came to light after his mother's death, Bill Thorness began a quest to rediscover his father. Thorness traveled to the World War II battlefields where America's first team of commandos fought. The youngest son of one of those commandos, Thorness gained a sense of the horror his father had kept from his family on the mountain where the First Special Service Force fought. Then, standing on a bridge in Rome, he reflected on the loss his father must have felt in not making it to the end of the campaign to liberate the Eternal City. In All Roads Lead to Rome Thorness considers his father's decisive moments in battle and beyond, and how he soldiered on as a disabled veteran through his life, raising a family and succumbing to an early death. Alternating between reimagined battle scenes and present-day travels, Thorness explores World War II and family history, the value and limits of memory, the attitudes of war, and our society's inadequate understanding and support of combat veterans, who may return with physical and emotional scars that change them deeply. Thorness steps into his father's shoes to revisit his story and finish that walk into Rome, weaving a story that is part travelogue, part history, and part memoir about the ravages of war.

Bill Thorness's varied work as a journalist has spanned more than thirty-five years, from early work as editor of a national business magazine to current work as a freelance writer. He is the author of five nonfiction books, including Cycling the Pacific Coast: The Complete Guide from Canada to Mexico.