These Boys and Their Fathers: A Memoir (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781609386795)

In 2010, Don Waters set out to write a magazine story about a surfing icon who had known his absentee father. It was an attempt to find a way of connecting to a man he never knew. He didn't imagine that the story would become a years-long quest to understand a man who left behind almost nothing except for a self-absorbed autobiography for his abandoned son.

These Boys and Their Fathers touches on Waters's early life with his single mother--and her string of dysfunctional men--and his later search for and encounters with his father, but it quickly expands into a gripping account of the life of a 1930s pulp writer, also named Don Waters, with whom Waters becomes obsessed. This wildly original book blends memoir, investigative reporting, and fiction to sort out difficult aspects of family, masculinity, and what it means to be a father.

Author: Don Waters
ISBN-10: 1609386795
ISBN-13: 9781609386795
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Language: English
Published: 10/01/2019
Pages: 230
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 08/15/2019
Shelf Awareness 10/15/2019