A man in uniform walks out of brick ruins into a yellow hazy sky. White title and author name centered. A man in uniform walks out of brick ruins into a yellow hazy sky. White title and author name centered.

Size: 5.5 x 8.25
Pages: 288
Illustrations: 27 b&w halftones

Memoir & Biography
ebook
hardcover
Forthcoming
Books
Travelogue & Essays

Tell the Kids I Love Them

A Memoir

Jeremy Redmon

Paperback

Published:

Hardcover
978-1-64336-654-8
Published: Sep 15 2026

$26.99

Spiral Bound

Published:

Ebook
978-1-64336-690-6
Published: Sep 15 2026

OA Ebook
978-1-64336-690-6
Published: Sep 15 2026

$0.00

The inclusion of this book in the Open Carolina collection is made possible by the generous funding of

A son's search for meaning in the shadow of war and a father's final words

In Tell the Kids I Love Them, Jeremy Redmon uncovers the mysteries of his father's life and death. His dad, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, took his own life when Redmon was a teenager—an act that propelled the author on a lifelong quest to understand war, loss, and fatherhood.

From blast-scorched Mosul to the ancient ruins of Babylon, Redmon chronicles his experiences as a war correspondent embedded with US troops in Iraq, surviving close calls while witnessing utter devastation as well as remarkable humanity.

Threaded with dark humor, told with cinematic detail, and conveyed with raw honesty, this memoir is as much about resilience as it is about tragedy. When Redmon becomes a father, he finally learns how to carry on with both his father's complicated legacy and the final message he left behind: "Tell the kids I love them."




Author website: jeremyleeredmon.com

Jeremy Redmon is a journalist and educator with more than three decades of experience writing for newspapers and magazines, and he now serves as the nation enterprise editor for USA Today. His articles have appeared in Smithsonian, Oxford American, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other publications. Redmon teaches for the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

"As a boy, as a reporter, and now as an author, Jeremy Redmon has braved violence and its ugly aftermaths. On a search to render meaning from those inheritances, he has written the rawest and truest and most generous of stories."—John T. Edge, writer and host of TrueSouth, author of House of Smoke: A Southerner Goes Searching for Home

"Redmon's often-harrowing memoir about living with his father's suicide is extremely moving. He writes with bravery, honesty, and grace, but the best word to describe this memoir is sincere. I came away changed."—Mary V. Dearborn, author of Hemingway: A Biography

"With clear, precise prose, Jeremy Redmon takes us to war torn Iraq, Little League Lacrosse fields, marriage and fatherhood all in attempt to discover something of his father's journey from celebrated Vietnam era Air Force pilot to suicide in a cheap hotel room. What he learns contains lessons for us all."—Lolis Eric Elie, co- producer and writer for Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

"I could speak at great length about the honesty and deep feeling of Jeremy Redmon's Tell the Kids I Love Them. But I would rather tell you simply to open it and read, for all that makes it such a beautiful book — its love, its pain, its grief and its hope — is baked into every sentence, from first to last. You will know, right away, that this is a special memoir."—Tom Junod, author of In The Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man