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When I First Held You: 22 Critically Acclaimed Writers Talk About the Triumphs, Challenges, and Transformative Experience of Fatherhood

by Brian Gresko

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Essays on fatherhood across its changing stages

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AlbakiReads Editorial

Essays on fatherhood across its changing stages

Edited by Brian Gresko, this collection brings together 22 writers reflecting on fatherhood from the decision to have a child through birth, toddlerhood, and the growing independence of adolescence. The essays frame parenting as a life-altering experience shaped by uncertainty, daily challenges, and the need to adapt as children change. Across these accounts, fatherhood is examined not as a single milestone but as an evolving relationship that reshapes a parent’s sense of self and view of the world. The multi-author format offers a range of personal perspectives on the practical and emotional dimensions of raising children.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Fathers interested in personal essays about parenting
  • Parents seeking reflections on family life from infancy through the teen years
  • Readers of multi-author nonfiction collections on fatherhood

Themes

FatherhoodParentingFamily relationshipsPersonal transformationChildhood and adolescence

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

From some of today's most critically acclaimed writers--including Dennis Lehane, Justin Cronin, Andre Dubus III, and Benjamin Percy--comes a rich collection of essays on what it means to be a dad.


Becoming a father can be one of the most profoundly terrifying, exhilarating, life-changing occasions in a man's life. Now 22 of today's masterful writers get straight to the heart of modern fatherhood in this incomparable collection of thought-provoking essays. From making that ultimate decision to have a kid to making it through the birth to tangling with a toddler mid-tantrum, and eventually letting a teen loose in the world, these fathers explore every facet of fatherhood and show how being a father changed the way they saw the world--and themselves.

"One of the first things I learned about fatherhood was that my father was right: it was hard and it kicked the shit out of your life plan."--Lev Grossman

"I wanted to hold him. I wanted to hold him close and never let go. But we have to let go, don't we?"--Andre Dubus III

"Bridges are engineered. Children are worked toward, clumsily, imperfectly, with a deep and almost religious faith in trial and error."--Ben Greenman

"If you counted up the nights I've spent dancing to 'Strangers in the Night, ' those hours would stretch three times around the equator."--Garth Stein

"The most surprising aspect of parenting has been how much my pre-parenting life looks like a cloud in the rearview."--Dennis Lehane

Contributors include
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