My Father's Keeper

Silin achieves a rare balance between clarity and immediacy, universality and specificity, and this is a supreme work, a searingly precise investigation into the times when ambivalence must coexist with love. —Philip Huang, East Bay Express

“Jonathan Silin’s story is uniquely his own but it could be yours and mine. Precious human documents like this prepare us for what lies ahead. They teach and they heal.” —Terrence McNally, author of Master Class

“Jonathan Silin offers a series of valuable reports from what might be called the country of farewells, using his raw experience to explore important questions about childhood, education, parenting, privacy, control, mental health, old age, death, and forgiveness. This is a rich, careful, honest book, both nakedly personal and coolly philosophical.” —Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters

“Primarily a search for the ethics of caretaking, and the boundaries that waver between parent and child when death looms, My Father’s Keeper is also a book about a gay Jewish teacher who loses his own life partner while his parents are falling apart. Rich with the strange parallels between coping with young schoolchildren and ‘the frail elderly,’ Silin’s conscientious analysis only makes the rocky decline of his two very real parents all the more moving. A wise, insightful book.” —Andrew Holleran, author of The Beauty of Men

“Jonathan Silin writes with analytical precision, delivering, without undue sentimentality, a look at the private struggles and quiet delights of caring for aging parents . . . a series of illuminating investigations into the themes of aging: independence, guilt, control, acceptance, forgiveness.” —Julie Hanus, Utne

“Responsible and poignant . . . Silin’s story reinforces the importance in making every day, every second cout, especially when those days are spent in the precious prescence of the people who raised us.” —Jim Piechota, Bay Area Reporter