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In today's world, the word "father" has almost as many interpretations as the Bible. In "Father Figures: Three Wise Men Who Changed a Life," Kevin Sweeney adds a new twist: the surrogate father who does not even realize his crucial role in a boy's life.

Sweeney, who lives in Northern California with his family and is a consultant in environmental protection and human rights, was 3 years old when his father died. Left nearly penniless, his 34-year-old mother set upon the task of raising six children in a close-knit Irish Catholic neighborhood in San Bruno.

In a mostly female-dominated house, 8-year-old Sweeney worried that he would never understand how to be a real man. So one day, he sat down on his bedroom floor and devised a plan for learning how to become a good father.

"I would pick out three men, and they would teach me how. I would not tell them -- they could not know of their role or that they were being observed -- but I would watch them closely, carefully, studying them as fathers.

"I would take every opportunity to sit by them, listen to them, learn from them. They would be the ones I relied on for advice, the ones I could remember that day in the future when I felt the need to say, `I remember when."

One of the most appealing things about this touching memoir -- which originated as an essay in Salon.com -- is how Sweeney avoids so many of the givens of the contemporary memoir. Despite family poverty, there is virtually no self-pity. It is also refreshing to read anything about the Catholic Church that doesn't bash it.

In revealing his journey to fatherhood, Sweeney manages to maintain honesty without wallowing in his own hard times.