Before I Knew Him is a daughter's discovery of the young man her father was before he became Daddy. After finding Arthur James Carter's wartime diary, Veronica Carter Jackson began following his journey from Birmingham, Alabama, into the U.S. Army during World War II. His brief handwritten entries reveal a Black soldier navigating military service in a segregated nation, crossing the Pacific, serving in Hawaii, becoming a sergeant, grieving the death of his mother, writing to the young woman he loved, and witnessing history while recording the ordinary details of daily life.
Blending her father's diary entries with family photographs, historical research, and personal reflection, Jackson reconstructs a life that had remained largely unspoken. The result is both a family legacy memoir and a historical portrait of service, love, loss, faith, and identity.
Before I Knew Him honors one Black World War II veteran while inviting readers to consider how much of our parents' lives exists beyond the roles in which we knew them-and what can be recovered when a family chooses to preserve the words, photographs, and memories left behind.
