Her Father: A Memoir - Hardcover

Henderson, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571198724 ISBN 13: 9780571198726

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1995

Synopsis

In 1980, thirty-nine-year-old Bill Henderson promised his dying mother that he would finally settle down and have a family. It was a promise to grow up, to make the transition from son to father. Four years later, his daughter was born. Her Father is the story, told with astonishing candor and self-deprecating humor, of a belated coming of age.
Here Henderson, the founder and publisher of the Pushcart Press, traces his journey to fatherhood in painstaking and hilarious detail. He begins in the 1970s, with his freewheeling life as a struggling small publisher and man-about-New-York-City in the heyday of sexual freedom. He describes meeting his wife at a cocktail-soaked book launch party, their move out of the city to a "shack" on Long Island, the ups and downs of their relationship, and their initial ambivalence about having a child. Ending with the hilarious misadventures leading to the birth of their daughter and cameos of her early years, Her Father is a highly personal yet universally familiar account of one man's passage to adulthood and concurrent spiritual reawakening.

About this title

About the Author

Bill Henderson is the author of The Kid That Could, a novel, and three memoirs, His Son, Her Father and Tower. He is the publisher and founder of Pushcart Press and the editor of the acclaimed Pushcart Prize series. He lives on Long Island and in Maine.

From Library Journal

Speaking with candor about his youthful adventures, Henderson, founder of the Pushcart Press and author of The Kid That Could (Pushcart Pr., 1990), spares no detail in his account of living in New York City during the 1970s. He describes an evening of sexual adventure at Plato's Retreat that seems particularly decadent in the days of AIDS awareness. Eventually, though, Henderson settles down, marries, and becomes a father while in his forties. He describes his wife's pregnancy and the much anticipated birth of his daughter with a suspense and humor that exhibit his storytelling art at its height. The subsequent glimpses of his life are filled with all the wonder and excitement a growing child can bring to a parent. The warmth and sensitivity Henderson shows toward his wife and daughter along with his growing self-awareness rescue the book from being just another macho record of sexual conquests. For public libraries.?Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0571198724
• ISBN 13: 9780571198726
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 200