Father's Day: Across America with an Unusual Dad and His Extraordinary Son [9780544002289]

Overview

"Gorgeous and brutally honest . . . As much as this is a book for parents, who know well the crushing vulnerabilities of the job, it is also a story for grown children who understand what it means to love an imperfect parent." – Entertainment Weekly

“Blunt, tender, sometimes harrowing, and always affecting, Father’s Day is a triumph.” — Susan Orlean, author of Rin Tin Tin and The Orchid Thief

The bestselling author of Friday Night Lights and Three Nights in August travels cross-country on a road trip with his son Zach, whose premature birth left him with a mix of remarkable skills and profound disabilities known as savantism. As father and son journey through the best and worst of America—and the best and worst in each other—Buzz learns to see the world through Zach's eyes.

Buzz Bissinger’s twins were born three minutes—and a world—apart. Gerry, the older one, is a graduate student preparing to become a teacher. His brother Zach is a savant, challenged by serious intellectual deficits but also blessed with rare talents: an astonishing memory, a dazzling knack for navigation, and a reflexive honesty that can make him both socially awkward and surprisingly wise.

One summer, striving to understand the twenty-four-year-old son who remains, in many ways, a mystery, Buzz convinces Zach to join him on a cross-country road trip. As father and son drive from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, revisiting all the places they have lived together, Buzz learns to see the world through Zach’s eyes. Father's Day is a powerful account of this journey, and a universal tale of the bond between parents and children.