Cestou za otcem - Rekonstrukce a reflexe životního příběhu Františka Valeny – Valena Tomáš (2019)

"What do I really know about my father?" asks architect Tomáš Valena (* 1950) at the beginning of his book. He has specific memories of him only from his early childhood; after that, his father was present only in a virtual 'mythical' form in the stories of his mother and friends or in photographs. The questions about the life, work, and significance of his father, a prominent figure in Catholic public life, František Valena (1913–1960), began to arise for the author only in his mature years, when not many witnesses were still alive. He thus began to reconstruct his father's life story almost detective-like, piece by piece assembling the mosaic of his life. As the author admits, there was also something else that compelled him to come to terms with his father's fate, but what that was he initially only vaguely sensed. During the writing process, outlines of similarities and contrasts between them began to emerge, which he had not thought about before. He realized that this would not just be a book about his father, but also about himself. The structure of the text is therefore 'dual-track'; on one side, it is a classic historical study – the story of his father, and on the other, the author's own reflections on this life story, a kind of 'measuring strength with his father.'