After Visiting Friends - by Michael Hainey (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This haunting story of a son's quest to understand the mystery of his father's death is "searing and unforgettable...memoir writing at its best" (San Francisco Chronicle)--a "powerfully affecting" (O, The Oprah Magazine) portrait of a family and its legacy of secrets.

"Family? Secrets? Sometimes I think they are the same thing." So writes Michael Hainey in this unforgettable story of a son's search to discover the decades-old truth about his father's mysterious death. Hainey was a boy of six when his father, a bright and shining star in the glamorous, hard-living world of 1960s Chicago newspapers, died under mysterious circumstances. His tragic absence left behind not only a young widow and two small sons but questions about family and truth that would obsess Michael for decades.

Years later, Michael undertakes a risky journey to uncover the true story about what happened to his father. Prodding reluctant relatives and working through a network of his father's old colleagues, Michael begins to reconcile the father he lost with the one he comes to know. At the heart of his quest is his mother, a woman of courage and tenacity--and a steely determination to press on with her life. A universal story of love and loss and the resilience of family in the face of hardship, After Visiting Friends is the account of a son who goes searching for his father, and in the journey discovers new love and admiration for his mother.

Review Quotes

"A book whose heartbreak and humor, in the true Irish tradition, can't be untangled. It's a kind of detective story, but the mystery is the past itself."--John Jeremiah Sullivan, author of Pulphead

"Is there any more powerful story in the world than a boy looking for his father? Michael Hainey's memoir begins with a mysterious death, proceeds through years of unanswered questions, builds into a relentless investigation, and ends with the stubborn alchemy of a heart transformed. This is a beautiful work of reporting and redemption. Parts of this story will stay with me forever. I finished it in tears."--Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed

"Michael Hainey makes his quest for answers about his father read like a thriller. Then, just when he's got you turning pages as fast as you can, he stops you with a heartrending detail, or steers you into some drowsy gin mill or fading prairie town for a sidebar of blunt-force power. By the end you're wrung out, but also uplifted."--J.R. Moehringer, author of Sutton and The Tender Bar

"[A] terrific memoir...Hainey's representation of his mother bursts with love and awe...The questions of family, loyalty and truth emerge in After Visiting Friends and will resonate with just about everyone. The surprise--for Hainey and the reader--is recognition of the compassion behind the cover-up."--Angela Matano "Campus Circle"

"As much an elegy to a once-upon-a-time era in American newspapers as it is a journey back, into a family and its past, to find truth. With poetic grace and taut investigative storytelling, Michael Hainey's After Visiting Friends shows how to keep going we sometimes need to pause and look back at where and who we come from."--Nick Flynn, auhor of The Reenactments

"Hainey is a superb storyteller...Rock-solid reporting mixed with heartfelt vignettes, lovely imagery (Hainey is a published poet) and a certain fairness, grit and honesty toward anything and everyone involved make After Visiting Friends one of the best books we've read in recent memory."-- "J. Crew (tumblr)"

"I inhaled this story. Everything you want and need in a book. I started chapter one with my coffee in the morning and then never made it to work. A beautiful book."--Gabrielle Hamilton, author of Blood, Bones & Butter

"[A] powerfully affecting memoir..."-- "O, the Oprah magazine"

"Hainey's writing is balletic, nimbly avoiding both sentimentality and sensationalism, making grief and absence into powerful and fully felt forces. His short scenes appear like flashes of memory, prose poems of what once was, and he skillfully weaves a narrative that transcends his own and spans generations...Part elegy, part mystery and wholly unforgettable."-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"

"Michael Hainey is a great writer. His memoir, After Visiting Friends, is not only gripping and powerful, but it is impeccably written. With a deft hand and a gentle touch, memoir becomes mystery in a world that brings back a bygone era of newspapermen. Hainey takes us through a deeply poignant journey of self-discovery--about how hard it is to sort out who we are and why we are and how our searches can lead to the most unexpected, but most satisfying, discoveries."--David Sheff, author of Beautiful Boy

"Michael Hainey's After Visiting Friends is my sort of book, a Chicago book, a family book of secrets. The powerful mystery at the heart of this story will pull you through to the moving ending, but its Hainey's straightforward and harrowing honesty that will grip you and stay with you. There's great dignity in the way Hainey treats his people, and this lost story."--Peter Orner, author of Love and Shame and Love

"Peering into an uncomfortable past, the journalist traces his family's history with dramatic, highly readable prose that makes the story feel like a compelling mystery."-- "Time Out New York"

"[A] searing and unforgettable memoir...Simply put, After Visiting Friends is memoir writing at its best...Gut wrenching, riveting and touching."--James McGrath Morris "The San Francisco Chronicle"

"A beautifully written exploration of family bonds and the secrets that may test them."--Vanessa Bush "Booklist"

"A gripping real-life mystery...Michael Hainey has written a heartbreaking book, a page-turner that spurs the reader forward."--Neil Steinberg "Chicago Sun-Times"

"A well-reported story beautifully told. [Michael Hainey's] father could only be proud."--Craig Wilson "USA Today"

"Captivating and poignant..."--Randy Dotinga "Christian Science Monitor"

"Hainey is a tremendously talented writer. He has written a thrilling page-turner, in a style that is personally reflective and meticulously reported. His prose is crisp and efficient--poetic."--David Bernstein "Chicago Magazine"

"After Visiting Friends is a devastating, heat-seeking, investigative search for the truth...The gorgeousness of Hainey's prose turns the search into an interior odyssey, to the limits of memory, to expiring minds that can no longer account for their undoing, to the dreams applied to family members who are no longer there."--Christopher Bollen "Interview"

"After Visiting Friends is full of love for the lost world of nocturnal newspaper work and after-hours boozing."--Janet Maslin "The New York Times"

"[After Visiting Friends is] an elegy to a vanished era of newspapering."--Michael Miner "Chicago Reader"

"[After Visiting Friends] moves with the pace of a thriller...it's both tenderhearted and tough. Michael Hainey is blessed with his father's writing crops, his mother's steely resolve and his own, hard-won wisdom."--Dan Cryer "Newsday"

"A fascinating, honest, and deeply touching story about a father and son, the price of family secrets, and the redemptive power of truth...Readers will be captivated and moved."--Rick Kogan "Chicago Tribune"

"A stirring book..."--Kay Johnson "Hutchinson Leader"

"Hacking through the tangles of conspiracy and silence, Hainey is as dogged as Marlowe or Spade, but his path is illuminated by a warmth of spirit those sleuths lacked."--Chris Wallace "The Daily Beast"

"Hainey's recollection of a childhood defined by his father's absence is haunting...Hainey's candor in After Visiting Friends, especially about the self-doubt and frustration that accompany his quest, makes it easy for us to root for him--not just in the search for truth but in the emotional transformation that comes with it."--Ron Hogan "Shelf Awareness"

"Hainey's words are clear, swift, colorful, precise, sometimes devastating."--Tucker Shaw "The Denver Post"

"In a sea of self-discovery memoirs, After Visiting Friends stands out for its level of journalistic inquiry...This doggedness is what brings Mr. Hainey to the truth about his dad."--Rafi Kohan "New York Observer"

"Part what next? detective story, part moving family portrait, and part wistful ode to the whiskey-sloshed mid-century Chicago newspaper world..."--Rob Brunner "Entertainment Weekly"

"Since the age of six, Michael Hainey had been haunted by the mysterious death of his father, a Chicago newspaperman. In After Visiting Friends he recounts in moving detail the obstacles he faced in uncovering the truth."--Elissa Schappell "Vanity Fair"