After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story - Softcover

"[A] searing and unforgettable memoir...Simply put, After Visiting Friends is memoir writing at its best...Gut wrenching, riveting and touching."--James McGrath Morris "The San Francisco Chronicle "

"Hainey's words are clear, swift, colorful, precise, sometimes devastating."--Tucker Shaw "The Denver Post "

"A gripping real-life mystery...Michael Hainey has written a heartbreaking book, a page-turner that spurs the reader forward."--Neil Steinberg "Chicago Sun-Times "

"A well-reported story beautifully told. [Michael Hainey's] father could only be proud."--Craig Wilson "USA Today "

"After Visiting Friends is full of love for the lost world of nocturnal newspaper work and after-hours boozing."--Janet Maslin "The New York Times "

"A fascinating, honest, and deeply touching story about a father and son, the price of family secrets, and the redemptive power of truth...Readers will be captivated and moved."--Rick Kogan "Chicago Tribune "

"Hainey is a tremendously talented writer. He has written a thrilling page-turner, in a style that is personally reflective and meticulously reported. His prose is crisp and efficient--poetic."--David Bernstein "Chicago Magazine "

"Part what next? detective story, part moving family portrait, and part wistful ode to the whiskey-sloshed mid-century Chicago newspaper world..."--Rob Brunner "Entertainment Weekly "

"Since the age of six, Michael Hainey had been haunted by the mysterious death of his father, a Chicago newspaperman. In After Visiting Friends he recounts in moving detail the obstacles he faced in uncovering the truth."--Elissa Schappell "Vanity Fair "

"[After Visiting Friends] moves with the pace of a thriller...it's both tenderhearted and tough. Michael Hainey is blessed with his father's writing crops, his mother's steely resolve and his own, hard-won wisdom."--Dan Cryer "Newsday "

This haunting story of a son’s quest to understand the mystery of his father’s death is “searing and unforgettable...memoir writing at its best” (San Francisco Chronicle)—a “powerfully affecting” (O, The Oprah Magazine) portrait of a family and its legacy of secrets.

“Family? Secrets? Sometimes I think they are the same thing.” So writes Michael Hainey in this unforgettable story of a son’s search to discover the decades-old truth about his father’s mysterious death. Hainey was a boy of six when his father, a bright and shining star in the glamorous, hard-living world of 1960s Chicago newspapers, died under mysterious circumstances. His tragic absence left behind not only a young widow and two small sons but questions about family and truth that would obsess Michael for decades.

Years later, Michael undertakes a risky journey to uncover the true story about what happened to his father. Prodding reluctant relatives and working through a network of his father’s old colleagues, Michael begins to reconcile the father he lost with the one he comes to know. At the heart of his quest is his mother, a woman of courage and tenacity—and a steely determination to press on with her life. A universal story of love and loss and the resilience of family in the face of hardship, After Visiting Friends is the account of a son who goes searching for his father, and in the journey discovers new love and admiration for his mother.