When Is Daddy Coming Home? is the moving story of one young American family during World War II. The war was coming to a close in Europe, and Richard Carlton Haney was only four years old when a telegram arrived at his family's home, informing them of his father's death. That moment was burned into the young boy's memory and it changed his and his mother's lives forever. Sixty years later Haney, now a professional historian, reconstructs his parents' lives during the war, drawing from their letters, his mother's recollections, and his own memories to create a unique blend of history and memoir.

Richard Carlton Haney earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and later graduated from West Point's post-Ph.D. military history program and the army's National Security Seminar at Carlisle Barracks. He is professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he taught courses in twentieth-century United States history, American military history, and Wisconsin history. The UW-Whitewater organization Students for an Accessible Society twice presented him with its teaching excellence award.