The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me
Posted by Editor on June 21, 2010 · 2 Comments
By Bruce Feiler [Learn More at Amazon.com]
From the Publisher
Bestselling author Bruce Feiler was a young father when he was diagnosed with cancer. He instantly worried what his daughters’ lives would be like without him. “Would they wonder who I was? Would they wonder what I thought? Would they yearn for my approval, my love, my voice?”
Three days later he came up with a stirring idea of how he might give them that voice. He would reach out to six men from all the passages in his life, and ask them to be present in the passages in his daughters’ lives. And he would call this group “The Council of Dads.”
“I believe my daughters will have plenty of opportunities in their lives,” he wrote to these men. “They’ll have loving families. They’ll have each other. But they may not have me. They may not have their dad. Will you help be their dad?”
The Council of Dads is the inspiring story of what happened next. Feiler introduces the men in his Council and captures the life lesson he wants each to convey to his daughters–how to see, how to travel, how to question, how to dream. He mixes these with an intimate, highly personal chronicle of his experience battling cancer while raising young children, along with vivid portraits of his father, his two grandfathers, and various father figures in his life that explore the changing role of fathers in America.
This is the work of a master storyteller confronting the most difficult experience of his life and emerging with wisdom and hope. The Council of Dads is a touching, funny, and ultimately deeply moving book on how to live life, how the human spirit can respond to adversity, and how to deepen and cherish the friendships that enrich our lives.
About the Author
Bruce Feiler is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including Walking the Bible, Abraham, and Where God Was Born, as well as the host of Walking the Bible on PBS. An award-winning author, journalist, and speaker, Feiler is a graduate of Yale and Cambridge Universities. He is a frequent contributor to NPR, CNN, and Fox News. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and twin daughters.
I plan to buy this book. I’m kind of into this “father” thing. My daughter and I have just “hosted” a foreign exchange student from Japan for the last nine months. Unlike most exchange students, she knew virtually zero English the day she arrived, and left, if not fluent, fairly communicative. I cried like a baby parting ways today, something I can’t remember having done any other time in my adult life (I cry at movies, but that’s because I’m a liberal).
Maybe it’s off topic, but one thing is for certain. When you meet and get to know people from other cultures, you realize we’re all of a common heritage.
Sounds like a great recommendation! As a single dad of a teenage girl, the thought occurs to me what would happen if I bit the dust in a traffic accident or was diagnosed with a terminal illness. My daughter and I are solid, despite the teenage drive to become independent (which I support), and she knows me well so I’m not too worried about the “father figure” part of the equation.
She’s got who I am although I still have a big part to play supporting her through college and beyond. But reading this makes me wonder what steps I should take to get her into adulthood if I where to exit the stage prematurely.