You Don’t Know Me: Reflections of My Father, Ray Charles

From the eldest son, who lived through Charles’s success, adultery, and addictions, comes this candid yet compassionate memoir. At age six, Robinson, now 54, found his father twitching and bloody from shooting heroin. He was nearly 50 before meeting many of his half-siblings from his father’s affairs. In between, his parents successfully created a normal life in Southern California—strict rules, curfew times, a sense of community. Ultimately, Robinson knew his father through his father’s affections, not his fame. He knew a remarkable man with an acute mind who would ride on a Vespa and play chess—a father whose attentions he craved but never thought he had captured. So despite earning a business and economics degree, working with and for his father, and starting a family, Robinson felt rejected. “I had nursed resentment against my father for most of my adult life, “ he writes, “always assuming that someday we would be together and everything would be made right.” Instead, things got worse, and Robinson abused cocaine. Beyond new insider details, this book is a cathartic tale of a son confronting his father’s legacy. (June)