Little Avalanches: A Memoir

By Becky Ellis and Becky Ellis

Book Overview

Winner of the Rubery Book Award for 2024 Nonfiction Book of the Year

Winner of the IAN Award 2024 Outstanding Military and War

Little Avalanches is a gorgeously written memoir of breathtaking scope that propels readers from the beaches of California in the early '70s to the battlefields of World War II.

As a young girl, Becky is forced to hide from phantom Nazis, subjected to dental procedures without pain medication, and torn from her mother again and again. Growing up in the shadow of her father's PTSD, she wants to know what is wrong but knows not to ask.

Her father won't talk about being a Timberwolf, a unit of specially trained night fighters that went into combat first and experienced a 300 percent casualty rate. He returns home with thirteen medals, including a Silver Star, and becomes a doctor and well-respected member of the community, but is haunted by his past.

Seeing only his explosive and often dangerous personality, Becky distances herself from the man she wants to love. Yet on the eve of his ninetieth birthday, when Becky looks at the vulnerable man he's become, something shifts, and she asks about the war. He breaks seventy years of silence, offering an unfiltered account of war without glory and revealing the extent of the trauma he's endured. She spends the next several years interviewing, researching, and ultimately understanding the demons she inherited.

Because his story is incomplete without hers, and hers is inconceivable without his, Ellis offers both, as well as their year-long aching conversation marked by moments of redeeming grace. With compassionate, unflinching writing, Little Avalanches reminds us that we are profoundly shaped by the secrets we keep and forever changed by the stories we share.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0DQJLH87Y
• ISBN13: 9798895651520
• Release Date: March 2025
• Publisher: Regalo Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Beautiful memoir about connection and compassion

Little Avalanches is a beautiful, sometimes difficult, read. As a daughter strives to understand her father who spent nearly 6 months in the trenches of WWII Europe. He finally opens up and describes the horrors and trauma that shaped his life. The story is beautifully told as the daughter seeks to understand her father’s trauma. Wonderful read for veterans’ families as well as all of us who could have more compassion for the unknown in others. Highly recommend.