My Father's Keeper


Book Description

As a child Julie was close to her father. More friend than parent, he would belt her into their tiny car and they'd punch through yellow lights, scarf down candy bars before supper and had their own way of making fun of Julie's mother in a secret language of eye-rolling. She adored her father for his exuberance, and pitied him when he broke down in suicidal desperation. But as she neared 10, a darker side emerged... This is a powerful and compelling memoir of growing up with a schizophrenic father.




My Father's Keeper


Book Description

There are and always have been ways of escaping one's own past. But there are some who have never had this chance: the children of prominent Nazis. On one hand they have the memories of the nice, kind man who was their father, on the other they are confronted with the facts of history: with the madness, the murders, the personal purgatory. The Leberts, father and son, spoke at an interval of forty years - 1959 and 1999 - to these men and women who bore a tainted name and were crushed by the burden of the past: Gudrun Himmler - 75, runs a network for old Nazis in Munich, denies her father did anything wrong; Martin Boorman (junior) - 70, believes his father was a monster; Etta Goring - 70, will hear no bad word about her father; Nicholas Frank (father was in charge of Auschwitz) believes his father was the incarnation of evil. The result is a series of snapshots of rare intensity and a demonstration of how these destinies have more to do with the twenty-first century than many would care to think.




My Father's Keeper


Book Description

My Father's Keeper is the moving story of Jonathan Silin, a gay man in midlife who learned to care for his elderly parents as a series of life-threatening illnesses forced them to make the difficult transition from being independent to being reliant on their son. Their new needs and unrelenting demands brought them into intimate daily contact and radically transformed what had been a difficult and emotionally fraught relationship. My Father's Keeper chronicles the unexpected ways in which the ideas and skills Silin acquired as an early childhood educator, a specialist in life span development, and a compassionate witness to the devastation of the HIV/AIDS crisis came together with his interest in human psychology to deeply inform his thinking about the dramatic changes in his family's life and increasingly influence his role as his father's (and mother's) keeper. Through the months and years of his parents' decline, Silin reflects on their history as a family, recalling the pain of his father's psychological struggles through midlife and the uneasy, imperfect process of accepting his son as a gay man and accepting his son's partner into the family. My Father's Keeper is a book about beginnings and endings, loss and redemption, the ethics of intervention, and the pressing needs of two extremely vulnerable populations.




My Father's Keeper


Book Description

Jack Macmillan slips back in time to World War II and finds himself among the allied troops fighting on the island of Guadalcanal. One of the young men he encounters is his own father, a man he has never truly connected with nor understood.




Our Brother's Keeper


Book Description

Few Vietnam books treat the effects of a U.S. soldier's death on his family. This muscularly written, starkly honest memoir fills a significant gap. Smith (Fatal Treasure), an Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor, was 22 years old, the oldest of six children, when his beloved younger brother Jeff was killed by a Vietcong rocket during a firefight near the village of Mai Xa Thi on March 7, 1968. Jeff's death tore the fragile family apart: their mother retreated into severe alcoholism and an all-encompassing fixation on Jeff (who had been her favorite); their emotionally distant father-a WWII Marine beset by postwar demons-left the family for another woman. Smith's other brothers and sisters suffered severe and lasting psychological problems, and Smith himself-while outwardly coping well by marrying, having children and working his way up the journalism ladder-became an emotional cripple bent on self-destruction: "Not only did I thoroughly embrace alcohol, but I also became kind of psychotic." Smith tells his story with bluntness and conviction, including what becomes a cathartic happy ending when he and two of his brother's fellow Marines make a journey to Vietnam in 2001 to visit the spot where Jeff died. --Publ.




Am I Still My Brother's Keeper?


Book Description

What does the Bible say about poverty and our responsibility toward the poor? This book examines the concept of “brother’s keeper” in both the ancient Near East and the biblical world. Wafawanaka contends that biblical Israel failed to play the rightful role of brother’s keeper and claims that we, too, have strayed from this responsibility. Am I Still My Brother’s Keeper? reveals what we can learn about poverty from a biblical context and how we might appropriate those insights to fight poverty in our own communities. Beginning with the biblical mandate in Deuteronomy 15, Wafawanaka surveys the Hebrew Scriptures and challenges those with power and resources to reevaluate their response to the poor. Failure to revisit the notion of “brother’s keeper” threatens to create a society that is increasingly disenfranchised and unjust. A glance at our world in light of biblical history suggests that poverty is an endemic global problem that requires a radical global solution.




I Am My Father's Keeper


Book Description

"This book was written for you, the caregiver of someone afflicted with Alzheimer's disease ... [It] chronicles my own experiences while caring for my dad through his affliction with Alzheimer's disease and a stroke."--Page ix.




Am I My Brother’S Keeper?


Book Description

Are we responsible for the well-being of our neighbors and our friends and family? Obeying the command of God is detrimental in our efforts to reap, eternal life. I have attempted to share my efforts from personal experiences through the power of the Holy Spirit guiding my actions. The Psalm, in 37:25, says, I have been young, and now am old; Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, Nor his descendants begging bread (NKJV). The author, Andrew Earl Stafford, took years to chronicle his experiences for over seventy years as he interprets how the Holy Spirit guided him to be a leader to his family, community, and nation in sharing the presence of God in our everyday lives. Andrew became aware of the presence of God at an early age as he observed how God protected and provided for his mother, Maezell, who in the 1940s, turned down welfare because she viewed it as a trap to create dependence, rather than an opportunity to succeed. Four boys and one girl to raise, Maezell was told by the welfare department that she could not own a car because it was considered a luxury. Well, Maezells response was that, she needed a car to transport her children to school, besides, she worked at a laundry until she retired. Their father, Clifford, after leaving the navy, had no choice but to try and earn a living playing baseball in the, Old Negro Baseball Leagues. His absence from the family created a situation of divorce. Though they face possible economic challenges, Maezells goal was to make sure all of her children finished high school. They all did, and most with honors and all with perfect attendances. Andrews book covers his struggles in poverty, racism, family, society, and in the realm of spiritual warfare. Although you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, theres no reason to fear evil. Andrew learned firsthand how God will empower each of us to make this world a better place to live if we are willing to wait on him.




My Father's Paradise


Book Description

In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly three thousand years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born. Yona's son Ariel grew up in Los Angeles, where Yona had become an esteemed professor, dedicating his career to preserving his people’s traditions. Ariel wanted nothing to do with his father’s strange immigrant heritage—until he had a son of his own. Ariel Sabar brings to life the ancient town of Zakho, discovering his family’s place in the sweeping saga of Middle-Eastern history. This powerful book is an improbable story of tolerance and hope set in what today is the very center of the world’s attention.




Father's Keeper


Book Description

Jen's always been a daddy's girl, even though her dad isn't her real dad. She's just now coming home to Pleasant Parks on her way to a brand new life. She's got a thriving sex life, she's had tons of fun, and she's gotten a goodly amount of wildness out of her system. Gil, her stepfather, welcomes her home with open arms and a huge hug. After all, it's her home too. He even semi-welcomes (or tries to put on a good show of it) her tagalong guy of the moment Carl. Gil's all on his own now that Jen's mother took off and left him for Marty McMurtry. A situation that breaks her heart the more she sees of his solitary life. The longer Jen's home, the more she wonders how her mother ever could have walked away from a man like Gil. When her long suppressed feelings for her step father come bubbling to the surface, she's shocked to find that Gil has his own feelings for her. Emotions and passions and turmoil run high as their torrid affair unfolds. There are a lot of folks whose tongues would wag if they knew what Jen and Gil were doing together. And as Jen's relationship with Carl fractures and she tries to deal with her haunting resentments toward her mother, she almost doesn't notice herself falling hard for her stepfather. Almost.