Now in paperback!

When environmental consultant Sweeney, who was three when his father died of heart failure, turned eight, he chose three men who were friends of his family to serve as stand-ins. At the time, the men didn't know the role Sweeney had picked for them, but they wound up teaching him invaluable lessons over the course of his life. Part memoir, part tribute and part guide for those who have lost a parent, this book (which is based on a Salon.com article Sweeney wrote shortly after September 11) is a thoughtful, touching and realistic look at how children cope with loss. "I did not feel fatherless," Sweeney writes, "not exactly, even though my mother never remarried. I had a strategy for coping. I was a kid with a plan." In spare, unadorned prose studded with touching details, Sweeney relates what it was like to lean on, and learn from, the men around him as he charted his own path to adulthood. The book is a testament of children's strength and resilience in the face of loss.