My Father's Ghost: An Author's Memoir

In My Father's Ghost, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Suzy McKee Charnas gives us an unsentimental yet moving account of her father, the irascible Robinson McKee, a frustrated artist revealed both by Charnas' wry narrative and by excerpts from his own quirky, eloquent journals—the voice of the man himself. Estranged from "Robin" since a divorce in her childhood family, Suzy reconnects with him decades later under dire circumstances and brings him out west to live with her and her husband in New Mexico. Over nearly twenty years following, she progresses from neighbor to caregiver to reluctant guardian. Ultimately she must make the hard decision to commit him to a nursing home, where, to everyone's amazement, rage and misery are changed into joy and grace. Though never stating the connection explicitly, My Father's Ghost explores an artistic legacy bequeathed from father to daughter—a gift, like many such gifts from a difficult parent, that she must find her own way to possess and to master.