I Had a Brother Once A Poem, A Memoir

by Mansbach, Adam

• ISBN13: 9780593134795
• ISBN10: 0593134796
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2021-04-13
• Publisher: One World

Summary

A brilliant, genre-defying work—both memoir and epic poem—about the struggle for wisdom, grace, and ritual in the face of unspeakable loss

“A bruised and brave love letter from a brother right here to a brother now gone . . . a soaring, unblinking gaze into the meaning of life itself.”—Marlon James, author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf

my father said
david has taken his own life

Adam is in the middle of his own busy life, and approaching a career high in the form of a #1 New York Times bestselling book—when these words from his father open a chasm beneath his feet. I Had a Brother Once is the story of everything that comes after. In the shadow of David’s inexplicable death, Adam is forced to re-remember a brother he thought he knew and to reckon with a ghost, confronting his unsettled family history, his distant relationship with tradition and faith, and his desperate need to understand an event that always slides just out of his grasp. This is an expansive and deeply thoughtful poetic meditation on loss and a raw, darkly funny, human story of trying to create a ritual—of remembrance, mourning, forgiveness, and acceptance—where once there was a life.

Author Biography

Adam Mansbach is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Go the F**k to Sleep, which has been translated into forty languages and sold over three million copies worldwide, as well as the novels Rage Is Back, Angry Black White Boy, and The End of the Jews, winner of the California Book Award.