cover image Home Again, Home Again: A Son's Memoir

Home Again, Home Again: A Son's Memoir

Thomas Froneck, Thomas Froncek. Arcade Publishing, $23.95 (272pp) ISBN 978-1-55970-332-1

This gracefully written and moving account by Froncek (Take Away One) focuses on his very ambivalent relationship with his father, Walter. On a visit home, the author is drawn to the Wisconsin house Walter designed and built with his own hands in the late 1940s. The construction required extraordinary sacrifices from Froncek's mother, which included housekeeping for a year in a one-room cabin without running water; she submitted to this arrangement because she felt her husband should have the chance to pursue his dream, notes the author. Unfortunately, shortly after the house was completed, Walter's lifelong discontent led him to move his family back and forth across the country as he frequently changed jobs. Although Froncek admired his father's self-reliance, he bitterly resented changing neighborhoods and schools, and admits to being emotionally damaged by his father's cold, critical manner. With Walter now bedridden in a nursing home, Froncek looks back on the love, however qualified, that they shared. Photos not seen by PW. (June)