Overview

Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family's back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael's father, was found alone near his car on Chicago's North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone, leaving behind a young widow, two sons, a fractured family--and questions surrounding the mysterious nature of his death that would obsess Michael throughout adolescence and long into adulthood. Finally, roughly his father's age when he died, and a seasoned reporter himself, Michael set out to learn what happened that night. Died after visiting friends, the obituaries said. But the details beyond that were inconsistent. What friends? Where? At the heart of his quest is Michael's all-too-silent, opaque mother, a woman of great courage and tenacity--and a steely determination not to look back. Prodding and cajoling his relatives, and working through a network of his father's buddies who abide by an honor code of silence and secrecy, Michael sees beyond the long-held myths and ultimately reconciles the father he'd imagined with the one he comes to know--and in the journey discovers new truths about his mother. A stirring portrait of a family and its legacy of secrets, After Visiting Friends is the story of a son who goes in search of the truth and finds not only his father, but a rare window into a world of men and newspapers and fierce loyalties that no longer exists.

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Reviews

From family history to Chicago lore, Hainey searches the deepest fissures of memory and finds a hidden and entire 'world of men, of stories, of knowledge' that wasn't there before. Part elegy, part mystery and wholly unforgettable.-- ""Kirkus Starred Review"" ""[A] searing and unforgettable memoir...Simply put, After Visiting Friends is memoir writing at its best...Gut wrenching, riveting and touching."" -- ""San Francisco Chronicle"" ""A fascinating, honest, and deeply touching story about a father and son, the price of family secrets, and the redemptive power of truth...Readers will be captivated and moved."" -- ""Chicago Tribune"" ""Hainey's words are clear, swift, colorful, precise, sometimes devastating."" -- ""Denver Post"" ""Hainey's writing is balletic, nimbly avoiding both sentimentality and sensationalism, making grief and absence into powerful and fully felt forces. His short scenes appear like flashes of memory, prose poems of what once was, and he skillfully weaves a narrative that transcends his own and spans generations...Part elegy, part mystery and wholly unforgettable."" -- ""Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"" ""I read the first few pages of his memoir, and was immediately captured by it--taken hostage completely. There is no way to begin this book without desperately wanting to finish it as fast as possible. There is no way to sleep in peace until you know how this memoir ends. There is no way not to care."" -- ""Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love""

"From family history to Chicago lore, Hainey searches the deepest fissures of memory and finds a hidden and entire 'world of men, of stories, of knowledge' that wasn't there before. Part elegy, part mystery and wholly unforgettable.-- ""Kirkus Starred Review"" ""[A] searing and unforgettable memoir...Simply put, After Visiting Friends is memoir writing at its best...Gut wrenching, riveting and touching."" -- ""San Francisco Chronicle"" ""A fascinating, honest, and deeply touching story about a father and son, the price of family secrets, and the redemptive power of truth...Readers will be captivated and moved."" -- ""Chicago Tribune"" ""Hainey's words are clear, swift, colorful, precise, sometimes devastating."" -- ""Denver Post"" ""Hainey's writing is balletic, nimbly avoiding both sentimentality and sensationalism, making grief and absence into powerful and fully felt forces. His short scenes appear like flashes of memory, prose poems of what once was, and he skillfully weaves a narrative that transcends his own and spans generations...Part elegy, part mystery and wholly unforgettable."" -- ""Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"" ""I read the first few pages of his memoir, and was immediately captured by it--taken hostage completely. There is no way to begin this book without desperately wanting to finish it as fast as possible. There is no way to sleep in peace until you know how this memoir ends. There is no way not to care."" -- ""Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love"""

Author Information

Michael Hainey has worked as a writer and editor for more than twenty-five years. Currently, he is the deputy editor of GQ magazine. After Visiting Friends is his first book. Michael lives in New York City. Dan John Miller is an American actor and musician. In the Oscar-winning Walk the Line, he starred as Johnny Cash's guitarist and best friend, Luther Perkins, and has also appeared in George Clooney's Leatherheads and My One and Only, with Renée Zellweger. An award-winning audiobook narrator, he has garnered multiple Audie Award nominations, has twice been named a Best Voice by AudioFile magazine, and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards and a Listen-Up Award from Publishers Weekly.

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