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My mother’s loss became my loss. The letters I found were like a roadmap through a grief she never meant to leave me. -Jessica Pearce Rotondi
In the mood for a story you just can’t stop listening to? When she was growing up, Jessica heard stories of her Grandpa Ed’s heroism in World War II. Shot down in a B-17 bomber over Germany in 1943 on a day known as “Black Thursday”, he was captured after parachuting onto a farmer’s land and spent over two years in the infamous prison camp known as Stalag 17. Once liberated, he returned home to the United States where he became a Pennsylvania State Trooper, raising five children with his wife, Rosemary. Three of their boys went into the military including their eldest son, Jack. He served two tours of duty in Vietnam until the night of March 29, 1972 when his AC-130 bomber vanished over Laos. For the next 36 years, the Pearce family searched for answers, refusing to accept his death without proof. Jessica’s mother devotes much of her life to finding out what happened to her brother, while at the same time, raising her daughter’s in a loving home, sparing them the pain she felt so deeply. But when her mother dies of breast cancer in 2009, Jessica finds herself on the floor of her mother’s closet sitting beside an old file cabinet filled to the brim with handwritten letters, news clippings, military documents and 13 CIA reports about the disappearance of Jack Pearce. On this day, Jessica decides to take up her mother’s search and find some answers of her own. An accomplished writer and editor, Jessica’s work has been published by TIME, Reader’s Digest, HuffPost where she is a senior editor and The History Channel. Her book: What We Inherit is more than a great story, it is living proof of the unbreakable bond between a mother and a daughter. www.JessicaPearceRotondi.com