In the fall of 1944, Joe Paul Hendrickson – the father of our guest today – kissed his 21-year-old wife and two baby children goodbye. The young first lieutenant, pilot of a famed P-61 Black Widow, was leaving for the war. He and his night fighter squadron were sent to Iwo Jima, where he flew approximately 75 missions, largely in pitch-black conditions.
In his latest book, Fighting the Night, Paul Hendrickson details his parents’ journey, together and apart, during the war. The book offers a vivid portrait of a difficult father whose wartime exploits were truly heroic, but his sacrifice was never without its psychic costs.
Paul Hendrickson is a three-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, winning in 2003 for his book Sons of Mississippi. He is the author of The Living and the Dead and Hemingway’s Boat, a New York Times bestseller. Hendrickson teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Pennsylvania and was a staff writer at The Washington Post for two decades.
