Author holding book signing in Austin

Published 7:01 am Sunday, August 23, 2015

Author Catherine Madison will be at the Austin Public Library at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 15 to discuss and sign copies of her new book “The War Came Home with Him: A Daughter’s Memoir.”

Madison’s book follows “Doc” Boysen during his years as a POW in North Korea and the hardships he passes along to family and friends.

In a memoir that’s harrowing and painfully poignant, Catherine Madison tells the stories of two survivors of one man’s war: a father who withstood a prison camp’s unspeakable inhumanity and a daughter who withstood the residual cruelty that came home with him.

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Boysen died 50 years after his ordeal, his POW experience concealed to the end in a hidden cache of documents. In “The War Came Home with Him,” Madison pieces together the horrible tale these papers told of a young captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps captured in July 1950, beaten and forced to march without shoes or coat on icy trails through mountains to camps where North Korean and Chinese captors held him for more than three years. As the truth about her father’s past unfolds, Madison returns to a childhood troubled by his secret torment to consider, in a new light, the telling moments in their complex relationship.

Beginning at her father’s deathbed, with all her questions still unspoken, and ending with their final conversation, Madison’s dual memoir offers a powerful, intimate perspective on the suppressed grief and thwarted love that forever alter a family.

Madison was editor-in-chief of “Utne Reader,” senior editor at “Adweek and Creativity Magazine,” founding editor of “American Advertising,” and editor-in-chief of “Format Magazine.” She has written articles for many publications, including the “Chicago Tribune,” “Star Tribune,” and “Minnesota Monthly.”