Take This Man (Skyhorse)

Book Reviews
This isn’t a predictable tale of irresponsible parenting.... For most of the book, the subject seems to be a fatherless young man on the proverbial quest for identity.... Then Skyhorse pulls a neat switch.... Thirty years later, Skyhorse does indeed track down the biological father who abandoned him, but in the intervening years he understands that the absent Father is unrecoverable.... So this memoir isn’t about absence. It’s about presence. Skyhorse’s subject isn’t what he’ll never have. It’s what he’ll always have, what he can’t get rid of.
Rhoda Janzen - New York Times Book Review


(Starred review.) [A] vivid and idiosyncratic family memoir .... Skyhorse's upbringing has had lasting effects on his romantic relationships and mental health, but he manages to write about his experiences and those who shaped them with grace. By turns darkly comical and moving, this powerful memoir of a family in flux will stick with readers well after they’ve put it down.
Publishers Weekly


[A]n account of [Skyhorse's] own Los Angeles childhood in the Echo Park neighborhood in a family so dysfunctional it seems to be fictional.... At 33, he finally searches for [his father] and gradually becomes part of a new, blessedly normal family. A harrowing, compulsively readable story of one man’s remarkable search for identity. —Deborah Donovan
Booklist


(Starred review.) [A] wickedly compelling account of a dysfunctional childhood growing up "a full blooded American Indian brave" with five different fathers.... As he gathered up the shards of his life...Skyhorse realized the one truth that his storytelling mother and grandmother had known instinctively: that "stories [could] help you survive"…. By turns funny and wrenching, the narrative is an unforgettable tour de force of memory, love and imagination.
Kirkus Reviews