Remember Me to My Father

In this extraordinary and powerfully wrenching novel, an adolescent boy searches for a path out of a seemingly inescapable "darkness" after the loss of his father in a time and place full of contradictions. Seen through the eyes of Ben Farkas, a child of first generation parents, and set against the backdrop of a small Midwestern suburban town in the mid-1950s, Remember Me to My Father takes us through what will be the most difficult and turbulent year of Ben's life. For him, the twelve months between the Cleveland Browns' devastating last-minute defeat in the 1953 NFL title game and the final day of 1954 are a period of anguish, confusion, punishment, despair and, finally, truimph. Remember Me to My Father is profoundly honest in its evocation of the pain and conflicting passions that besiege the youth of both sexes and superb in its depiction of the capricious social and moral climate in the 1950s. Exceptional writing, a deep dense of compassion for its protagonist, and a rare depth of insight combine to make it a masterful historical portrait of smalltown life a half a century ago and a novel in the classic tradition of Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Hemingway.