Author Tim O’Brien’s is best known for writing the book, “The Things They Carried,” a historical novel about the Vietnam War. In fact, he’s written several books on that topic. But now, his work is going in a different direction. “Dad’s Maybe Book,” out this month, is about fatherhood, and a tribute to the two sons he had, starting at age 58.
“It occurred to me years and years ago, when my first son was born, that when they began to know me, they’d know an old man,” O’Brien says. “Which is life; which is how it happened.”
While O’Brien has stepped away from the topic he’s known for, to write this book, he says he was never strictly a war writer anyway.
“I have written about Vietnam, and written about it extensively,” O’Brien says. “[But] I was not writing about bombs and bullets and military maneuvers and saluting; I was writing about the human heart under stress.”