David, Betsy, and Sammy Berman were nine, six, and four years old in May 1943 when the U.S. Army sent their father, Dr. Reuben Berman, to Europe. Over the next two and a half years, the children regularly gathered around their mother, Isabel Berman, in their Minneapolis home while she typed exactly what they wanted to say to their father.

This collection of more than 340 letters, selected from more than a thousand exchanged by the Berman family via V-mail, captures the anxiety and loss that children experienced when their fathers left for war.