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鈥檛 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鈥檚 early life with his single mother鈥攁nd her string of dysfunctional men鈥攁nd 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.
鈥淕enerous, scrupulously honest, and gorgeously original in its telling, Don Waters鈥檚 These Boys and Their Fathers is an absolute knockout of a memoir. Waters shape-shifts among genres, voices, and eras to get at the heart of the matter, which happens to be the hardest human matter of all: how to live at peace with ourselves and our family, both the family we鈥檙e born into and the family we make for ourselves. This book is one of the wisest, most searching explorations of an individual life I have ever encountered, one whose humanity and heart offer universal appeal.鈥濃擝en Fountain, author, Billy Lynn鈥檚 Long Halftime Walk
鈥淭here is an empty space on the bookshelf where a search for a father belongs, and Don Waters has written it. As with most fathers, it is a story of filling in the gaps, reliving memories and imagined memories, and heading to the edge of experience and truth. Heartbreaking, ambiguous, funny, and wise, These Boys and Their Fathers is the book so many of us have been waiting for.鈥濃擜ndrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize鈥搘inning author, Less
鈥淎n extraordinarily powerful, moving, and urgent exploration of the crossroads between masculinity, paternity, fantasy, 鈥榯ruth,鈥 and howling sadness.鈥濃擠avid Shields, author, Reality Hunger
鈥淒on Waters鈥 latest book opens with a gut punch: a letter introducing himself, as a high school senior, to the father who left when he was a toddler. These Boys and Their Fathers blends memoir, reportage and fiction in a disquieting yet absorbing, bare-it-all plunge into manhood, family and fatherhood.鈥濃The Oregonian
鈥These Boys is a powerfully candid story of discovering 鈥榗losure鈥 through accepting and living alongside the pain and truth.鈥濃Shelf Awareness
