In My Absence Author:Lisa Ottiger There is so little that I can write but I do want to write this letter so you will know I have thought of you constantly since we parted. Either we will read it together some day or Hunter will send it along when all this is over. In 1942, William Harrington was one of thousands of military personnel captured by the Japanese when th... more »e American army surrendered in the Philippines. Sixty years later, his granddaughter tries to piece together the story of his final journey. Through powerful wartime letters, poems, and memoir, Lisa Ottiger recounts her family's eccentric history in the Philippines and the improbable love story of her grandmother Ruth, an American woman raised in glamorous pre-war Manila, and her grandfather, a young lawyer from Mississippi. In My Absence is a moving story about the many journeys a family must make to lay rest its past and give voice to its story.« less