Return of the Lost Son - by Christopher Gonzales (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A son searches for his father, only to grow uncomfortable--and even miserable--with what he exhumes. Where, he asks, are the limits of forgiveness? Is failure a badge of honor? Are we free to share the secrets of the dead? In Return of the Lost Son, a vivid, tightly paced memoir, Christopher Gonzales attempts to understand a man who, due to early-onset Alzheimer's, was unable to share his own memories.

At the outset of his exploration, Gonzales hopes to discover a benevolent father figure, someone he could imagine guiding him through the difficult terrain of life. Instead, he is met with shadowy fragments of his father's habits--drinking, womanizing, and aloofness--as well as a hidden marriage, which all force Gonzales to acknowledge that he might never uncover the angel he hoped to find. Constructed with clear-eyed prose and abounding with colorful travel stories, wending inner journeys, and psychological intricacies, Return of the Lost Son emerges from a committed project of asking and listening, recovering memory and community, and ultimately, healing.

Review Quotes

"A kaleidoscopic journey that unfolds in evocative prose, Return of the Lost Son transports readers from Ithaca, New York, to Mexico City, from the past to the present, from fact to imagination. The result is an immersive, affecting read that centers a complicated figure in a story brimming with truth, honesty, and love."--Laura Maylene Walter, author of Body of Stars

"Like all great memoirists, Gonzales contends with the slipperiness of memory, our shifting relationship to the past, and the human desire for stories to contain our grief. Return of the Lost Son is a master class in narrative nonfiction."--J. D. Schraffenberger, editor of the North American Review

"More than a memoir, Return of the Lost Son is an act of reparation: in sifting through the ashes and shards of his father's ruptured past, connecting with his father's past wives and his own lost siblings, and becoming a husband and father himself, Christopher Gonzales crafts his own contrasting version of family, one fused by compassion, vulnerability, and self-determination."--Molly Beer, author of Angelica: For Love and Country in a Time of Revolution

About the Author

Christopher Gonzales has published stories in the Hopkins Review, North American Review, Stone Canoe, and elsewhere. He and his wife live in the Finger Lakes region of New York.