Daddy Mojo reads: Finding Uri by Sandy Munro

Finding Uri is the true story of a father and son who never knew each other.  Uri was a WWII pilot, shot down in action, leaving behind a wife and their three year old son, Sandy. A year after his mother’s death, Sandy receives a box that contained hundreds of letters that his mother and father had written to each other.  To make the letters even more emotional, some of them were written after Uri’s death, but before Betsy knew. 

Finding Uri introduces us to Betsy, Uri, their relationship and the early struggles they had while raising a toddler.  The letters between Uri and Betsy are a fascinating piece of history that proves couples yesterday were just like today.  Sandy takes great care to set up the story of his grandfather also.   Those elements combined, with the photographs from WWII are amazing to look at and remind us of simpler times.

Unfortunately, the way that the book reads takes away from the power of the story.  The setting is established for where they are in their life and then a letter from Uri in placed in.  The story is being set in the first or third person, while the letters are in the second or third person.   It’s always clear when the letter is telling the story because of the fact that it was scanned into the story.

Because of that the story sometimes loses its footing.  The constant back and forth feels like a time travel novel with a story that you want to follow, but can’t due to the pacing of the story.

 

Another drawback was the fact that we were introduced to so many of the characters other than Uri.  We meet his father and Betsy, which is certainly a large part of Uri’s life, but is not part of the reason that the title was attractive.

It’s not that Finding Uri is a bad book; it just wasn’t what it was billed to be.  The story of a son finding out about his father, like a ‘historical-fiction’ version of The Help would have given the author the opportunity to control the timeline.  This is a book that you want to like-based on history, characters and emotion, but ultimately falls short.

Daddy Mojo reads is a review series on books.  Sometimes it’ll be a children’s book and other times it will be a popular fiction or non-fiction book.  I’m not scared to stop a book halfway through if it’s losing me or just plain isn’t interesting-life is too short to waste on a bad book.  In this case we did receive a promotional copy of the book.