Told through a constellation of memories that spans four decades, Boys Without Fathers is the story of two brothers, Jason and Jess, who grew up working-poor on the edge of the Hamptons and learned from the example of their father, Pop, that men are tough, they drink heavily, and they never talk about their feelings. We meet the brothers in 2008, when Jason is driving Jess to a detox center in Portland, Oregon during a torrential rainstorm at first light. Meanwhile, Pop calls to say he's drinking again after twenty years sober. For decades, each brother struggled in their own ways to survive, but thanks to their mother and the bond all three shared, there's never been any shortage of hope, and against the odds, one of them ended up in Wichita, Kansas with both long-term sobriety and a PhD. With crackling prose and a wealth of heart and humor in the face of childhood poverty, addiction and generational mental illness, Boys Without Fathers blazes a vivid trail from the very first page. Along the way, two mysteries unfold-whether Jess will join Jason in recovery before it's too late, and whether their father will ever surface again.
"Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious...
In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another."
- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Insert from epilogue: What's happening to me? I can't hear. She put her hand
on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes. They slid me
on and off of tables, they took my blood in and out of
machines but I don't know why or what the results were.
Oxygen in my nose, people scrambling around me. No
way to communicate. I feel like I'm dying alone. I know
I did some drugs but I don't know how much. I've OD'd
before, but this is something different.
