The bestselling author of The Things They Carried and If I Die in a Combat Zone shares wisdom from a life in letters, lessons learned in wartime, and the challenges, humour and rewards of raising two sons.

When Tim O'Brien became an older father, he resolved to give his young sons what he wished his own father had given to him - a few scraps of paper signed 'Love, Dad'. Maybe a word of advice. Maybe a sentence or two about some long-ago Christmas Eve. Maybe some scattered glimpses of their rapidly ageing father, a man they might never really know. For the next fifteen years, the author talked to his sons on paper, as if they were adults, imagining what they might want to hear from a father who was no longer among the living.
O'Brien traverses the great variety of human experience and emotion, moving from soccer games to warfare to risque lullabies, from alcoholism to magic shows to history lessons to bittersweet bedtime stories, but always returning to a father's soul-saving love for his sons.
The result is Dad's Maybe Book, a funny, tender, wise, and enduring literary achievement that will squeeze the reader's heart with joy and recognition.

About the Author

Tim O'Brien received the National Book Award for Going After Cacciato. Among his other books are The Things They Carried, Pulitzer Finalist and a New York Times Book of the Century, and In the Lake of the Woods, winner of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. He was awarded the Pritzker Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military writing.

Reviews

'[A] stirring blend of memoir, letters to his young sons, and meditations on the humbling nature of parenthood...It's a work that's the spiritual inheritor of John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley and Kurt Vonnegut's A Man Without a Country. [O'Brien] takes absolutism to task, finds qualifications for his own pacifism and considers the paradox of a moral society that allows for forever war' Time Magazine

'O'Brien uses his deft skill of wordplay throughout this latest book...Fans of parenting books, memoirs, and stories of Vietnam War veterans will find enjoyment in these heartfelt words' Library Journal

Book Information
ISBN 9780008372491
Author Tim O'Brien
Format Paperback
Page Count 400
Imprint Fourth Estate Ltd
Publisher HarperCollins Publishers
Weight(grams) 280g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 25mm