Having wounded his father with a hurtful letter when he was twenty-three, Tom Couser felt somewhat responsible for his later mental collapse. When his father died, Tom found personal documents that revealed facets of his fathers life of which Tom had known nothing. Too traumatized to grieve properly, much less to probe his fathers complicated history, Tom boxed the documents and stored them-for over thirty years. When he finally explored his fathers rich legacy, he achieved a belated reconciliation with a man he had not really known.

G. Thomas Couser is professor emeritus of English at Hofstra University and author of six previous books, including Memoir: An Introduction, published by Oxford UP in 2012.

List of Figures Acknowledgments Prologue: In My Fathers Closet: Life, Death, and Letters Part One: The Father I (Thought I) Knew 1. After the War: Manchester, New Hampshire 1947-1954 2. Suburban Life: Melrose 1954-1968 3. The Empty Nest: 1964 to 1973 4. McLean Patient, 1973 5. Widower: 1973-1975 6. Endnotes: A Life in Scraps, 1974-75 Part Two: Part Two: The Father I Never Knew (But Now Know) 7. Mill Town Lad: 1906-1930 8. "In Aleppo Once": Syria 1930-33 9. First Love: Rody 10. Illicit Love: Lena 11. Manly Love: Bob and the YMCA 12. Edgar: "To you, I shall return a Prodigal" 13. George Saylor: Gay Blade 14. Marriage, War, and Family Epilogue: Grief Interrupted

It may be unfair that an accomplished scholar who has written some of the most significant investigations of the power inequities and ethics of life writing (Recovering Bodies, Vulnerable Subjects, Signifying Bodies), as well as an introduction to the genre as skilled as his On Memoir, should also be capable of writing authoritative, complex life writing itself. But G. Thomas Couser has done just that with Letter to My Father: A Memoir.
— Biography

In this engrossing and deeply-felt memoir, Cousers quest to understand and imagine his fathers life gives the reader an affecting story of reclamation. Part biography, part detective story, this book attests to the emotional and literary power of a sons love.
— Sharon O’Brien, author The Family Silver: A Memoir of Depression and Inheritance.

A late mid-life exploration of his fathers many secrets leads Tom Couser to produce a memoir replete with courageous and hard-won insights. Cousers narrative reveals a son struggling to maintain respect, even love, amidst temptations to anger and disillusionment. Reading this wise book, we understand how memoir may ineluctably be a form of mourning.
— Roger Porter, Emeritus Professor of English, Reed College, and author of Bureau of Missing Persons: Writing the Secret Lives of Fathers.


Letter to My Father is an epistolary memoir. Although it does not take the form of a letter, its writing is motivated in part by a desire to atone for an earlier well-meant letter which failed to open a conversation with a father in the throes of alcoholism. This search to know his father, fueled by regret and peppered with interrogatives, seeks to recreate a father he knew less well than did others. Most of us live with both unanswered and unasked questions about our fathers and mothers, aware that our parents are compounds of our limited personal memory and overwhelming blank space. Many never venture into the blank spaces, but Couser does, and this memoir is an honest assay to fill the blank space surrounding an ever-elusive father he resembles, envies, knows, and doesn’t know.
— Margaret Gibson, author of The Prodigal Daughter, a memoir, and 11 books of poetry.

Was he implicated in his father’s death from alcoholism and depression, a sad end to a life of early promise and adventure? In this carefully structured memoir a son searches for an answer as he explores his father’s letters. Resisting easy resolution, the story Couser uncovers of his father’s complex emotional life is rich in surprising knowledge and belated recognitions.
— Paul John Eakin, Indiana University, author of Living Autobiographically: How We Create Identity in Narrative.