Excerpts

While you will find much more about Mom in the later chapters of this book, I want to tell you about Dad. He died in a car accident in 1984, just three months after I started my first job. The accident was covered in the local newspaper. A couple of months earlier, he had visited my former professors after the college decided to keep me on as an English teaching assistant. He wanted to ensure that nothing unexpected would jeopardize my future. In a society that valued strong