Stories for Boys: A Memoir - Softcover

Martin, Gregory

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0983477582 ISBN 13: 9780983477587

Publisher: Hawthorne Books, 2012

Synopsis

In this memoir of fathers and sons, Gregory Martin struggles to reconcile the father he thought he knew with a man who has just survived a suicide attempt; a man who had been having anonymous affairs with men throughout his thirty-nine years of marriage; and who now must begin his life as a gay man. At a tipping point in our national conversation about gender and sexuality, rights and acceptance, Stories for Boys is about a father and a son finding a way to build a new relationship with one another after years of suppression and denial are given air and light.

Martin’s memoir is quirky and compelling with its amateur photos and grab-bag social science and literary analyses. Gregory Martin explores the impact his father’s lifelong secrets have upon his life now as a husband and father of two young boys with humor and bracing candor. Stories for Boys is resonant with conflicting emotions and the complexities of family sympathy, and asks the questions: How well do we know the people that we think we know the best? And how much do we have to know in order to keep loving them?

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

With clean vivid descriptions, and ruthless soul-wrenching self examination, Greg Martin bravely tells a story he never imagined having to tell. The reader is privileged here, to be allowed to watch as he wrestles with his sons, his own belief systems, his urge toward forgiveness and even Walt Whitman. This finely made, deeply felt memoir restores our faith in the power of language and story to make sense of a broken world. PAM HOUSTON, author Contents May Have Shifted

Stories for Boys is a charming and moving coming-of-age story, its narrator situated in the pivotal position between being his father's son and his sons' father. So refreshing and unique is Martin's treatment of the material that the reader will never mistake this book for its inferior competitors dealing with similar subjects (suicide, latent homosexuality, child abuse). One hopes this is the new wave of memoir: stories of people whose lives are not easily categorized nor dismissed. It is a sweet read. ANTONYA NELSON, author of Bound

Gregory Martin's Stories for Boys is a magnetic meditation on what happens when a decades-long lie is brutally revealed. Moving, brave, and unforgettable, this deeply personal book pushes us all further into the light. CHERYL STRAYED, author of Wild
|In this memoir of fathers and sons, Gregory Martin struggles to reconcile the father he thought he knew with a man who has just survived a suicide attempt; a man who had been having anonymous affairs with men throughout his thirty-nine years of marriage; and who now must begin his life as a gay man. At a tipping point in our national conversation about gender and sexuality, rights and acceptance, Stories for Boys is about a father and a son finding a way to build a new relationship with one another after years of suppression and denial are given air and light.

Martin’s memoir is quirky and compelling with its amateur photos and grab-bag social science and literary analyses. Gregory Martin explores the impact his father’s lifelong secrets have upon his life now as a husband and father of two young boys with humor and bracing candor. Stories for Boys is resonant with conflicting emotions and the complexities of family sympathy, and asks the questions: How well do we know the people that we think we know the best? And how much do we have to know in order to keep loving them?

About the Author:

Gregory Martin is the author of Mountain City, a memoir of the life of a town of thirty-three people in remote northeastern Nevada, which received a Washington State Book Award, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and is referred to by some people in Mountain City as "the book." Martin's work has appeared in The Sun, Kenyon Review Online, Creative Nonfiction, Storyquarterly, and Orion. He teaches creative writing at the University of New Mexico. He lives in Albuquerque with his wife and two sons.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hawthorne Books
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0983477582
• ISBN 13: 9780983477587
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 274