Description
Book SynopsisHaving wounded his father with a devastating letter when he was twenty-three and felt somewhat responsible for his subsequent mental collapse, the author reexamines his fatherâs life using documents found after his death to reflect on their relationship and reach a reconciliation with a man he had not really known.
Trade ReviewIn this engrossing and deeply-felt memoir, Couser's quest to understand and imagine his father's life gives the reader an affecting story of reclamation. Part biography, part detective story, this book attests to the emotional and literary power of a son's love. -- Sharon O’Brien, author The Family Silver: A Memoir of Depression and Inheritance.
A late mid-life exploration of his father's many secrets leads Tom Couser to produce a memoir replete with courageous and hard-won insights. Couser's narrative reveals a son struggling to maintain respect, even love, amidst temptations to anger and disillusionment. Reading this wise book, we understand how memoir may ineluctably be a form of mourning. -- Roger Porter, Emeritus Professor of English, Reed College, and author of Bureau of Missing Persons: Writing the Secret Lives of Fathers.
Letter to My Father is an epistolary memoir. Although it does not take the form of a letter, its writing is motivated in part by a desire to atone for an earlier well-meant letter which failed to open a conversation with a father in the throes of alcoholism. This search to know his father, fueled by regret and peppered with interrogatives, seeks to recreate a father he knew less well than did others. Most of us live with both unanswered and unasked questions about our fathers and mothers, aware that our parents are compounds of our limited personal memory and overwhelming blank space. Many never venture into the blank spaces, but Couser does, and this memoir is an honest assay to fill the blank space surrounding an ever-elusive father he resembles, envies, knows, and doesn’t know. -- Margaret Gibson, author of The Prodigal Daughter, a memoir, and 11 books of poetry.
Was he implicated in his father’s death from alcoholism and depression, a sad end to a life of early promise and adventure? In this carefully structured memoir a son searches for an answer as he explores his father’s letters. Resisting easy resolution, the story Couser uncovers of his father’s complex emotional life is rich in surprising knowledge and belated recognitions. -- Paul John Eakin, Indiana University, author of Living Autobiographically: How We Create Identity in Narrative.
Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgments Prologue: In My Father’s Closet: Life, Death, and Letters Part One: The Father I (Thought I) Knew 1. After the War: Manchester, New Hampshire 1947-1954 2. Suburban Life: Melrose 1954-1968 3. The Empty Nest: 1964 to 1973 4. McLean Patient, 1973 5. Widower: 1973-1975 6. Endnotes: A Life in Scraps, 1974-75 Part Two: Part Two: The Father I Never Knew (But Now Know) 7. Mill Town Lad: 1906-1930 8. “In Aleppo Once”: Syria 1930-33 9. First Love: Rody 10. Illicit Love: Lena 11. Manly Love: Bob and the YMCA 12. Edgar: “To you, I shall return a Prodigal” 13. George Saylor: Gay Blade 14. Marriage, War, and Family Epilogue: Grief Interrupted
