New Releases by Sandy Munro

Finding Uri is a memoir written by a man who had only one fleeting remembrance of his father. The father, Uri Munro, was a naval aviator flying off the U.S.S. Enterprise in the Pacific in WWII. Uri was shot down and lost in January of 1945.

The author, also a navy carrier pilot in the 1960s, unexpectedly received in 2007 a box in the mail following his mother's death at the age of eighty-five. It contained 190 letters written back and forth between Uri and Betsy (the mother) while Uri was in the service flying in TBM torpedo bombers. It was the first time that the author had any inkling of the existence of the letters.

After almost a year's consideration, the letters were arranged in chronological order and the author began a two-year process of reading the letters, and writing about the experience in real time. There are excerpts and photographs, and the emotional nature of the letters themselves as Uri's family is also brought into the story. Uri was born in Russia. His Scottish father, Alec, and his mother, Varvara, smuggled him out of Russia early in the Bolshevik Revolution.

The author explored other sources, and his own shipboard experiences to tell the story of Uri's Torpedo Squadron 90, but even more significantly—getting to know his father, and his surprising mother, during that two year period in their lives. It's an intimate but true tale that the reader discovers along with the author.