Explora Books to Present Mary Lou Darst’s War Ready at the 2026 Beijing International Book Fair
Explora Books is set to exhibit Mary Lou Darst’s War Ready: In My Father’s Shadow at the 2026 Beijing International Book Fair, scheduled for June 17–21 at the CNCC in Beijing. Part memoir, part travelogue, and part reckoning with a complicated father-daughter bond, the book chronicles Mary Lou’s childhood as a U.S. Army dependent, tracing a family’s life across Alaska, Japan, and Germany in the years following World War II.
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 2nd Jun 2026 – Mary Lou was born in Houston, Texas, in 1943, just as her father was preparing to head overseas with the Army. She did not meet him until she was two years old, and the distance between them—literal and emotional—would define much of her childhood. Carl Kennedy Hughes was a World War II veteran, an Army Corps of Engine...
