Now in paperback!

Hankies ready? You'll need them during the first chapter of this lovely memoir, but after that it shifts gears and re-creates the childhood of a resilient boy who navigated life without a father. Sweeney was 3 when his dad died in 1962, leaving his mom to raise six children, the oldest only 10, on very little money. But they had a church and a neighborhood (the old-fashioned kind, with lots of kids and chaos), and his mom had a circle of friends she'd grown up with. It was from among her friends' husbands that Kevin "adopted" three dads, men he secretly watched for lessons on how to be a father, a husband, a good man. That's the hook for this story - it's the best Father's Day book we've read in years. But it's also about what childhood was like 40 years ago, when things were expected of even the smallest kids, when siblings looked out for each other, when thrift was a virtue and grief could be postponed in favor of survival. Never maudlin, this book will make you think about what fatherhood really is, and wonder how your own children would do if they were in the Sweeney kids' shoes.