Overview
Ā
āHow often does a memoir build to a stomach-churning, I-canāt-breathe climax in its final pages? . . . Brilliant, intensely moving.āāWilliam Finnegan, Pulitzer Prizeāwinning author of Barbarian Days
Almost everyone yearns to know their parents more thoroughly before they die, to solve some of those lifelong mysteries. Maybe, just maybe, those answers will help you live your own life. But life doesnāt stop to wait. In his fifties, New Yorker writer Tad Friend is grappling with being a husband and a father as he tries to grasp who he is as a son. Torn between two families, he careens between two stages in life. On some days he feels vigorous, on the brink of greatness when he plays tournament squash. On others, he feelsĀ distinctly weary, troubled by his distance from millennial sensibilities or by his own face in the mirror, by a grimace thatās so like his fatherās.
His father, an erudite historian and the former president of Swarthmore College,Ā has long been gregarious and charming with strangers yet cerebral with his children. Tad writes that ātrying to reach him always felt like ice fishing.ā Yet now Tadās father, known to his family as Day, seems concerned chiefly with the flavor of ice cream in his bowl and, when pushed, interested only in reconsidering his view of Franklin Roosevelt.
Then Tad finds his fatherās journal, a trove of passionate confessions that reveals a man entirely different from the exasperatingly logical father Day was so determined to be. It turns out that Tad has been self-destructing in the same way Day hasāa secret eachĀ has kept from everyone, even themselves. These discoveries make Tad reconsider his own role, as a father, as a husband, and as a son. But is it too late for both of them?
Witty, searching, and profound, In the Early Times is an enduring meditation on the shifting tides of memory and the unsteady pillars on which every family rests.
This book title, In the Early Times (A Life Reframed), ISBN: 9780593137352, by Tad Friend, published by Crown (May 10, 2022) is available in hardcover. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
Unlike Amazon and other retailers who may also offer In the Early Times (A Life Reframed) books on their website, we specialize in large quantities and provide personal service, from trusted, experienced, friendly people in Portland, Oregon. We offer a Price Match Guarantee, and QuickQuote form, to make purchasing quick and easy.
Prefer to work with a human being when you order In the Early Times (A Life Reframed) books in bulk? Our Book Specialists are standing by Monday-Friday 8-5 PST, ready to help!