“There is an empty space on the bookshelf where a search for a father belongs, and Don Waters has written it. As with most
fathers, it is a story of filling in the gaps, reliving memories and imagined memories, and heading to the edge of experience and
truth. Heartbreaking, ambiguous, funny, and wise, These Boys and Their Fathers is the book so many of us have been waiting
for.”—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, Less
— Andrew Sean Greer
“Generous, scrupulously honest, and gorgeously original in its telling, Don Waters’s These Boys and Their Fathers is an absolute knockout of a memoir. Waters shape-shifts among genres, voices, and eras to get at the heart of the matter, which happens to be the hardest human matter of all: how to live at peace with ourselves and our family, both the family we’re born into and the family we make for ourselves. This book is one of the wisest, most searching explorations of an individual life I have ever encountered, one whose humanity and heart offer universal appeal.”—Ben Fountain, author, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
— Ben Fountain
“An extraordinarily powerful, moving, and urgent exploration of the crossroads between masculinity, paternity, fantasy, ‘truth,’ and howling sadness.”—David Shields, author, Reality Hunger
— David Shields
“Don Waters' latest book opens with a gut punch: a letter introducing himself, as a high school senior, to the father who left when he was a toddler. These Boys and Their Fathers blends memoir, reportage and fiction in a disquieting yet absorbing, bare-it-all plunge into manhood, family and fatherhood.”
— The Oregonian
“These Boys is a powerfully candid story of discovering "closure" through accepting and living alongside the pain and truth.”—Shelf Awareness
— Shelf Awareness