Jake Hollister
A photograph tucked in an attic trunk. A name never spoken. A silence that shaped a family.When Aaron Hale returns to his childhood home to care for his ailing father-a war veteran defined by cold discipline and emotional distance-he stumbles upon a photo that shouldn’t exist. Two young soldiers. One is his father. The other is a stranger, name half-erased but emotions unmistakable.What begins as a quiet discovery spirals into a reckoning with the ghosts of war, the weight of unspoken guilt, and the cracks in a broken family. Through journals, old letters, and fading memories, Aaron uncovers a secret war hidden inside their home-the kind fought not on battlefields, but in silence, shame, and absence.The Photo in the Attic is a literary exploration of father-son relationships, intergenerational trauma, and the cost of survival when history is buried instead of healed. For readers who believe that love sometimes speaks loudest through silence-and that truth always finds its way to the light.
