Dear Son...

There are things a father says out loud. And the things he only ever says in his head. Col JS Maan has spent his life in high, thin air: a fourth-generation soldier and a decorated Army helicopter pilot who once flew one of the highest live rescue hoist missions ever attempted. But the bravest thing he ever set out to do was this: to write down, for his two sons, everything he is afraid he may not be there to say.

Dear Son... is that book - twenty-one letters written over many ordinary evenings while the boys slept. They move from love and character to money, work and failure; from a frozen mountain rescue at sixteen thousand feet to the hospital corridor on the night his first son was born; from the comrades he could not save to the small, ordinary joys he only now understands were everything. Each letter ends the way the best advice always does - simply, and from the heart: Your Papa.

Written by a serving officer but meant for every home, this is a book to be read at twelve, argued with at twenty-five, and understood completely on the day you hold a child of your own.For every father who has words he hasn't said. For every son who will one day wish he'd asked. You will laugh in places. You will stop and stare out of the window in others. And somewhere before the end, you will reach for your phone and call your father - or sit down, at last, and write to your son. Some letters shouldn't wait..Be afraid, if you must. But be brave anyway.