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Scribner
February 2013
On Sale: February 19, 2013
320 pages
ISBN: 1451676565
EAN: 9781451676563
Kindle: B008J4E2PI
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir
A decade in the writing, the haunting story of a son’s
quest to understand the mystery of his father’s death—a
universal memoir about the secrets families keep and the
role they play in making us who we are. 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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