A Father's Quest


Book Description

The title of the book, A Father's Quest, was decided on years before I started writing the book. I knew that I would be writing a book from what a medium had told me years before, but I never started it. Maybe I had to have a bad stroke to make it happen. I had prayed for years that my son would get married. Maybe I would have to have a stroke for this to happen too. God works in our lives in a strange way. For years I went to therapy, learning to walk and to work on moving my arm. I quit therapy in March 2018. I had nothing to do, and I became bored for the first time in my life. That was when I started writing. It would take me twenty-seven months to finish. Many of my friends told me to record the book and have someone type it for me, but I wanted to write the book completely by myself. I'm right-handed, and I can finally move my right hand but cannot really use it. I didn't know how to type, but I typed it with one finger on my left hand on a computer. After our daughter Tammy died on January 5, 1997, it became impossible to sleep. During that time, I lived my whole life over again. I went on a six-year quest, trying to prove that Tammy was murdered and to get custody of my granddaughters, Tammy's children. I would fail more than I would succeed. But I had become too stubborn to ever give up. After I had my stroke, many of my friends told me that this story was motivational to them. I hope you enjoy reading my book, A Father's Quest.




The Father Quest


Book Description

A New Understanding of Fatherhood that Surprises, Heals and Inspires. Fatherhood itself is a life of its own. It carries the great responsibility of raising children with the right values, giving them the best education and implementing a code of morality into their lives. In addition, the father himself must be dedicated to his moral duties for the rest of his life. These are some of the themes that readers will discover in this Fisher King Press publication. This Father Quest brings to readers an in-depth focus on what being a father is all about. It emphasizes fatherhood in its deepest personal and spiritual meanings and explores the psychological dimensions of fatherhood. The Father Quest goes beyond simple prescriptions and techniques to explain the importance of fatherhood s deeper personal meanings, as well as to culture. Interestingly, it describes the father as being one of the two great pillars of society that shape and support human life from the beginning. The Father Quest explores the critical importance of passion and love as key ingredients of the "spirit of fatherhood." Thanks to its richly-layered content, readers who are struggling to be fathers, as well those who are struggling with their own fathers, will find The Father Quest to be great source of inspiration.




Kelly


Book Description

Winner of the 2008 Premier Book Award for best biography The son of Irish immigrants who grew up along the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia at the turn of the twentieth century, Jack Kelly became a three-time gold medal Olympian, a political maverick, and the millionaire father of a princess. In this classic American tale of grit and perseverance, the clash between old world privilege and new world courage is played out on many fronts—including the watery battlefield of rowing, where Kelly first chose to forge his strength of character. Author Daniel J. Boyne follows the life of Kelly as he parlays his athletic prowess to France during WWI and then ventures into Philadelphia politics during the Great Depression. Readers are introduced to other members of the Kelly clan, including Jack’s brothers, Walter and George, who ascend to international acclaim in the world of theater, not to mention his daughter Grace, who seeks to follow in their footsteps against her father’s will, and his son, Jack Kelly Jr., upon whose shoulders is laid the greatest challenge of all—to carry on the Kelly tradition of championship rowing. Featuring more than thirty gorgeous historical photographs, Kelly is an uplifting true story of a real champion’s profound success in sport and life.




Finding My Father


Book Description

A #1 New York Times bestselling author traces her father’s life from turn-of-the-century Warsaw to New York City in an intimate memoir about family, memory, and the stories we tell. “An accomplished, clear-eyed, and affecting memoir about a man who is at once ordinary and extraordinary.”—Forward Long before she was the acclaimed author of a groundbreaking book about women and men, praised by Oliver Sacks for having “a novelist’s ear for the way people speak,” Deborah Tannen was a girl who adored her father. Though he was often absent during her childhood, she was profoundly influenced by his gift for writing and storytelling. As she grew up and he grew older, she spent countless hours recording conversations with her father for the account of his life she had promised him she’d write. But when he hands Tannen journals he kept in his youth, and she discovers letters he saved from a woman he might have married instead of her mother, she is forced to rethink her assumptions about her father’s life and her parents’ marriage. In this memoir, Tannen embarks on the poignant, yet perilous, quest to piece together the puzzle of her father’s life. Beginning with his astonishingly vivid memories of the Hasidic community in Warsaw, where he was born in 1908, she traces his journey: from arriving in New York City in 1920 to quitting high school at fourteen to support his mother and sister, through a vast array of jobs, including prison guard and gun-toting alcohol tax inspector, to eventually establishing the largest workers’ compensation law practice in New York and running for Congress. As Tannen comes to better understand her father’s—and her own—relationship to Judaism, she uncovers aspects of his life she would never have imagined. Finding My Father is a memoir of Eli Tannen’s life and the ways in which it reflects the near century that he lived. Even more than that, it’s an unflinching account of a daughter’s struggle to see her father clearly, to know him more deeply, and to find a more truthful story about her family and herself.




Paternity


Book Description

“In this rigorous and beautifully researched volume, Milanich considers the tension between social and biological definitions of fatherhood, and shows how much we still have to learn about what constitutes a father.” —Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity For most of human history, the notion that paternity was uncertain appeared to be an immutable law of nature. The unknown father provided entertaining plotlines from Shakespeare to the Victorian novelists and lay at the heart of inheritance and child support disputes. But in the 1920s new scientific advances promised to solve the mystery of paternity once and for all. The stakes were high: fatherhood has always been a public relationship as well as a private one. It confers not only patrimony and legitimacy but also a name, nationality, and identity. The new science of paternity, with methods such as blood typing, fingerprinting, and facial analysis, would bring clarity to the conundrum of fatherhood—or so it appeared. Suddenly, it would be possible to establish family relationships, expose adulterous affairs, locate errant fathers, unravel baby mix-ups, and discover one’s true race and ethnicity. Tracing the scientific quest for the father up to the present, with the advent of seemingly foolproof DNA analysis, Nara Milanich shows that the effort to establish biological truth has not ended the quest for the father. Rather, scientific certainty has revealed the fundamentally social, cultural, and political nature of paternity. As Paternity shows, in the age of modern genetics the answer to the question “Who’s your father?” remains as complicated as ever.




Father Knows Less, Or, Can I Cook My Sister?


Book Description

A New York Times city editor traces his efforts to seek out answers to questions posed by his precocious young son, endeavors during which he interviewed countless experts to discern truths about such topics as the pain of a jellyfish sting and the reason that police officers like doughnuts.




Daddy Dates


Book Description

One day motivational leader Greg Wright realized that the four set of pretty young eyes under his own roof were looking to Dad to be strong, fearless, and wise. The reality was, the lone male in an all-girl household ("heck, even the dog was female") was only thirty years old and felt like he had been shoved into the deep end of the estrogen pool without swimming lessons. That's when the love-struck father of four gorgeous pre-teens started searching for a plan for how to be a successful Dad, and did what any sensible guy would do. He bailed. Not only on his family, but into the woods, to seek a "solution." Daddy Dates is an entertaining and practical look at how one American father found his sea legs and is navigating through the tricky waters of parenting girls. In this game-changing book, Greg shares his easy-to-follow secrets for how married and single dads can go beyond high-fiving to bridge the gender gap and become the clued-in man who knows his daughter best. Dads have more influence on their girls than anyone. Learn what makes your daughter tick, how to talk to her effectively and connect more profoundly, at any age. If being their hero is your mission, it's not impossible. Daddy Dates is your road map to get there. "Hi honey. It's Daddy. I'm calling to see if you'd like to go on a date with me tonight." "Um, yes, Daddy I think I would." It's a phone call Greg Wright has made over and over again. By age thirty, Greg was the overwhelmed father of four beautiful little girls, with one thought running through his mind over and over again: Don't Screw Up. Daddy Dates is about a guy taking his best shot at being a successful dad by trying to know his girls?really know their fears, dreams, and opinions?and how he stumbled across an incredible strategy to do that with daughters of any age or stage. This funny, insightful, and relatable book poses the wildly original concept that should be a "duh" for most dads?but isn't. In order to raise a confident woman-to-be, show your daughter what it feels like to be treated with love, respect, and true interest by a man who loves her. Daddy Dates is not another "how to" book from a parenting expert. It's a personal, eye-opening, often humorous look at an Average Joe's intentional pursuit of his daughter's hearts and minds, and the love-inspired steps he is taking to solidify Dad's place in each of their lives, forever. Whether married or single, Daddy Dates can help you better connect with virtually all of the females in your life. Using Greg's communication cues, you'll be blown away by what you'll learn about your child, and how you can make a powerful, lasting difference?especially during her rocky teenage years. Daddy Dates is about one thing?becoming her hero?one date at a time. Endorsements: –Matt Crossman, Senior Writer for SPORTING NEWS magazine (and father of 2 daughters) DADDY DATES wondrously focuses men (and the women who love them) on the affirmation & empowerment a father’s creative attention, energy, and love can have on the precious daughters in our lives. –Jan Goldstein, bestselling author of THE BRIDE WILL KEEP HER NAME (and father of 3) It’s an easy thing to say that any father with a daughter should read this book. But, the truth




Off the Radar


Book Description

A spy story, a mystery, a father-son heartbreaker: Cyrus Copeland seeks the truth about his father, an American executive arrested in Iran for spying at the time of the 1979 hostage crisis, then put on trial for his life in a Revolutionary Court. As a young boy living in Tehran in 1979, Cyrus Copeland—child of an American father and Iranian mother—never dreamed that his dad, an employee of Westinghouse, would be in danger for his life. That is, until the moment his father was arrested on espionage charges and put on trial in a Revolutionary Court. Almost simultaneously, more than fifty other Americans were taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy by Islamist militants, an event that has recently captivated the world again with the success of the book and film Argo. With the hostage crisis receiving most of the attention from the media and White House, it was largely left to Copeland’s mother and family to negotiate his father’s reprieve from the firing squad. Now, more than thirty years later, Copeland sets out to find the truth about his father and his role in the Iranian hostage crisis. Was he in fact an intelligence operative—a weapons-system expert—caught red-handed by the Iranian regime, or was he innocent all along? Part mystery, part reportage, and part detective work, Copeland’s brilliantly original family epic is a powerful memoir and adventure.




Canyon Quest


Book Description

In the first book of the series, readers will learn about God’s sovereignty and how things work together for good. The Exciting Start of the Last Chance Detectives! A dry, forsaken blip on the edge of civilization. That’s what Mike Fowler thinks of the little town of Ambrosia in the Arizona desert. He has no friends, no fun, and no answers to the agonizing disappearance of his dad in a top-secret military mission. But that could all change after Mike stumbles onto his dad’s puzzling journal in the old B-17 out back. The mysterious coded entries in the journal lead him to a hidden canyon rimmed with strange lights in the sky, muffled voices, and a knife he’s sure belongs to his dad! Something big—maybe a covert military operation—is going on in that secluded canyon. And Mike is sure if he just follows the clues, he’ll find his dad. But with each new discovery, he and his daring companions—Ben, Spence, and Winnie—land in more and more danger. It’s the case of their young lives. Now if only they only live to escape it! Get to know The Last Chance DetectivesMike: Fearless and bold, his leadership spurs the group on—sometimes into danger!Winnie: She knows the desert like the back of her hand and has a nose for news.Ben: His imagination makes him a great problem solver.Spence: A technical genius, he’s the brains of the outfit.Together, these four friends won’t stop until the mystery is solved!




The Girl Behind the Door


Book Description

“A moving and riveting memoir about one family’s love and tragedy…beautifully researched, and expressed” (Anne Lamott). Early one Tuesday morning John Brooks went to his teenage daughter’s room. Casey was gone, but she had left a note: The car is parked at the Golden Gate Bridge. I’m sorry. Within hours a security video showed Casey stepping off the bridge. Brooks spent several years after Casey’s suicide trying to understand what led his seventeen-year-old daughter to take her life. He examines Casey’s journey from her abandonment at birth in Poland, to the orphanage where she lived for her first fourteen months, to her adoption and life with John and his wife, Erika, in Northern California. He reads. He talks to Casey’s friends, teachers, doctors, therapists, and other parents. He consults adoption experts, researchers, clinicians, attachment therapists, and social workers. In The Girl Behind the Door, Brooks’s “desperate search for answers and guilt for not doing the right thing without knowing what it was reveals the utter helplessness of suicide survivors” (Kirkus Reviews). Ultimately, Brooks comes to realize that Casey probably suffered an attachment disorder from her infancy—an affliction common among children who’ve been orphaned, neglected, and abused. She might have been helped if someone had recognized this. The Girl Behind the Door is an important book for parents, mental health professionals, and teens: “Rarely have the subjects of suicide, adoption, adolescence, and parenting been explored so openly and honestly” (John Bateson, Former Executive Director, Contra Costa County Crisis Center, and author of The Final Leap: Suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge).