Manyebook

The Boy He Left Behind: A Man's Search for His Lost Father

Mark Matousek's one memory of his father goes back to his childhood growing up in an eccentric Jewish family in Los Angeles; one day, when he was watching The Ed Sullivan Show with his sisters, the father he had never known appeared at the door and tried unsuccessfully to kidnap him. He never saw his father again. Years later, he told this story to a friend, who dared him to hire a private detective to track his father down. The challenge led to an extraordinary search — not only for the stranger who gave him life but for Matousek's own sense of self.The Boy He Left Behind is a riveting, suspenseful, lyrical read. It is a poignant mother-son story of a boy's childhood among women, and a meditation on intimacy, adulthood, and mortality. As we anxiously follow Matousek and his hard-boiled private investigator from one dead-end lead to the next hopeful possibility, we experience with him the desperate human need to know where we come from and to understand our place in the world. With Mark Matousek as our guide, we must finally come to terms with the inevitable uncertainties of identity, and with the unrelenting and sometimes insidious bonds of love and family.

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 288
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9781573221542
  • Genres
  • memoir, family, biography
  • Release date
  • 2000