Phoenix
A Brother's Life
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
A beautifully rendered portrait of family and loss, of childhood and manhood by a supremely gifted writer evaluating the sum of his experiences and emerging with a moving work of the highest level.
J. D. Dolan was vacationing in Paris when he received a telephone call telling him to fly home immediately. A horrible accident had put his big brother John in a Phoenix burn unit with third degree burns over 90 percent of his body. As a child in 1960s Los Angeles, J. D. shared with John the unspoken bond that exists only between brothers. But as time passed and their excursions together ended, so did their conversation. For reasons known to John alone, they existed with each other only in silence, and now, in what would be their final days together, there would be precious few opportunities to talk. Phoenix is J. D. Dolan's personal reflections on the agonizing weeks spent coming to terms with his brother's fate, and his attempt to bring their relationship into perspective.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dolan's brutally honest, enthralling memoir about his dysfunctional family and the loss of his brother transforms a personal tragedy into a moving meditation on how family relationships shift over time, and how the death of a loved one can become a defining moment in one's life. Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1960s with three feuding sisters, a taciturn older brother whom Dolan worshipped and parents who seemed more interested in their Masonic Lodge activities than in their kids, the author endured a family life of betrayals and punishing silences that lasted for years. By his own account, Dolan in his 20s was a pot-smoking, LSD-popping road manager for rock bands and "famous pop relic" Cher, but gradually straightened out and became a writer whose stories and articles have appeared in Esquire and the Nation. In 1985, when his brother, John, suffered severe burns in a power-plant explosion and lay dying in a Phoenix, Ariz., hospital, Dolan rushed back from Paris, even though John had refused to speak to him for the previous five years. We never fully learn why brooding John was "pissed off at the world," though the reasons seem to lie in his constant need to prove his manhood, his bitter divorce and the emotional armor-plating that was a legacy of his upbringing. Dolan's razor-sharp prose cuts on impact, while his narrative throbs with regret, guilt and unspoken love. This exceptional debut marks Dolan as a writer to watch.
