Home is Burning: A Memoir

In this impressive debut, Marshall relates the bleak reality of caring for his father after ALS%E2%80%94also known as Lou Gehrig's disease%E2%80%94began wreaking havoc on his body. The disease had a dramatic effect on the entire family, already reeling from their mother's ongoing battle with cancer. Memoirs about a family member who has contracted a terminal illness are almost tediously common, but most of them don't include jokes about oral sex or puns on the word "dystrophy." Fortunately for readers, Marshall's brain is wired for profanity, gallows humor, and graphic self-deprecation, and the rest of his family is not much different. Marshall evokes sympathy, but never pity, as he conveys his family's pain through fart jokes, farcical misadventures (sexual and medical), and%E2%80%94in the middle of all the confusion%E2%80%94emotion so raw and potent it's almost jarring. Honesty is the key; Marshall never shies away from the filthy, uncomfortable reality, and it's that brutal truth-telling that makes his memoir a must-read. (Oct.)