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The Boy He Left Behind

Audiobook

"I was four years old when my father came back to kidnap me," begins this gripping memoir about Matousek's search for James Matousek, the drifter father he never knew. Described by the New York Times as "part reminiscence, part detective story, part spiritual musing," this memoir is more than the story of one man's search for his father; it is also a look at the meaning of life and how fathers contribute to that meaning.

Growing up in a family of troubled women (Matousek's sister committed suicide when the author was 29), he describes the turmoil of growing up "fatherless in America"—an experience shared by millions of children in what sociologists have called the Age of the Absent Father—and the difficult, ultimately successful, struggle to figure out what being a man really means in an age of shifting definitions, evolving sexuality, and "breaking out the man box" of stereotyping and patriarchy. With the tension of a mystery story, the climax occurs when Matousek meets a man he believes to be his father. But is he? And does Matousek, who has reconciled with his mother as she lay dying, really care? These are just two questions leading to this memoir's surprising conclusion.


Expand title description text
Publisher: Open Book Audio Edition: Unabridged

OverDrive Listen audiobook

  • ISBN: 9781936455669
  • File size: 183180 KB
  • Release date: March 18, 2014
  • Duration: 06:21:37

MP3 audiobook

  • ISBN: 9781936455669
  • File size: 183205 KB
  • Release date: March 18, 2014
  • Duration: 06:21:35
  • Number of parts: 6

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Formats

OverDrive Listen audiobook
MP3 audiobook

Languages

English

"I was four years old when my father came back to kidnap me," begins this gripping memoir about Matousek's search for James Matousek, the drifter father he never knew. Described by the New York Times as "part reminiscence, part detective story, part spiritual musing," this memoir is more than the story of one man's search for his father; it is also a look at the meaning of life and how fathers contribute to that meaning.

Growing up in a family of troubled women (Matousek's sister committed suicide when the author was 29), he describes the turmoil of growing up "fatherless in America"—an experience shared by millions of children in what sociologists have called the Age of the Absent Father—and the difficult, ultimately successful, struggle to figure out what being a man really means in an age of shifting definitions, evolving sexuality, and "breaking out the man box" of stereotyping and patriarchy. With the tension of a mystery story, the climax occurs when Matousek meets a man he believes to be his father. But is he? And does Matousek, who has reconciled with his mother as she lay dying, really care? These are just two questions leading to this memoir's surprising conclusion.


Expand title description text