Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A young reporter goes in search of his long-lost, deceased father. "There's lots of stories you haven't heard," said the narrator's mother when he asked about an unfamiliar family anecdote. But GQ deputy editor Hainey wanted to hear them all. When his father died suddenly one spring day in 1970, he left behind two boys, a wife and a trail of questions that no one wanted to answer for Hainey. For years, the family danced silently around the subject of his father, until the author decided to track down whatever true story was left of him. It was the obituary that set him off: His father allegedly died "after visiting friends," but who were they? Who was with him in his final hours? With medical records and a few shaky, secondhand accounts from his father's former co-workers, a tight-lipped crew of old-time Chicago newspapermen, Hainey hoped to fill the gaps between what he had always been told and what it seemed might actually be true. His personal investigation took him across the country and into strangers' lives, but the most difficult and hard-won part of the journey was his gradual, intimate understanding of his mother and brother. Hainey's writing is balletic, nimbly avoiding both sentimentality and sensationalism, making grief and absence into powerful and fully felt forces. His short scenes appear like flashes of memory, prose poems of what once was, and he skillfully weaves a narrative that transcends his own and spans generations. From family history to Chicago lore, Hainey searches the deepest fissures of memory and finds a hidden and entire "world of men, of stories, of knowledge" that wasn't there before. Part elegy, part mystery and wholly unforgettable.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

When Hainey was 6, his father, a 35-year-old copydesk editor for the Chicago Sun-Times, died of an apparent heart attack on the street on his way home from work. Hainey's uncle, also a newspaperman, came to the family home to deliver the news to his brother's wife and two sons. While his father lived on in scrapbooks, his mother cobbled together a life for them, and Hainey grew into his father's profession, becoming a reporter with a relentless sense that something was missing from the story of his father's death. As he approached the age at which his father died, Hainey began an investigation, talking to family members and his father's friends and colleagues. Hainey slowly pieces together his father's last years and the secrets of his life, breaking through a code of silence that respected a dead man's legacy but understood the reporter's search for the truth. What would the truth mean for his family, for his mother and her curt explanations and gauzy memory? This is a beautifully written exploration of family bonds and the secrets that may test them.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist

Library Journal
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Hainey was a young boy when his newspaperman father died suddenly. His stoic mother refuses to talk about the death, and Hainey's secret perusal of his father's obituaries leads him to believe there is more to the story than he has been told. Hainey follows his father's journalism footsteps, and as an adult he uses his reporter's skills finally to get to the bottom of the story that has defined his life. This compelling memoir is read by Dan John Miller, whose voices, pacing, and talent for conveying nuance and emotion bring Hainey's text to life. VERDICT Hainey deftly weaves family history and personal memory into his quest for the truth about his father, creating for the reader an incredible and captivating story. Highly recommended. ["Readers may intuit quickly what happened the night of Hainey's father's death, but the portrait of the bygone world of the Chicago newspaper industry and the slow unraveling of the puzzle surrounding Bob Hainey's life, rather than his death, will keep readers interested beyond that point," read the review of the Scribner hc, LJ Xpress Reviews, 3/21/13.]-Amy Koester, St. Charles City-Cty. Lib. Dist., Wentzville, MO (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Six-year-old Hainey woke one morning to a knock on the door of his family's house in Chicago; Hainey's uncle delivered the news that Michael's 35-year-old father, Bob, a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, had been found dead of an apparent heart attack. What happened to him? Why had he been out so late and not at home? Bob Hainey's obituary indicates that the newspaperman was visiting friends; who were these friends? In this heartfelt memoir, Hainey painfully reconstructs the few years he recalls with his father and painstakingly searches for clues that might help him understand his father's death. When he turns 35, Hainey sets off on a quest to interview as many of his father's friends as will talk to him, to review all the published details of his father's death, and to discover what his father was really like. Along the way, "instead of conjuring my father dying alone, he sees this alternate, secret narrative: him, friends, far from home, late at night...." Eventually, he discovers a disturbing secret that his mother has long kept silent, grappling to understand this new dimension of his parents' lives and resigning himself to having discovered a side of his father he never knew. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.