My Father's Heart: A Son's Journey

by Steve McKee

Description

Sixteen-year-old Steve McKee watched his father die of a heart attack on the couch in their TV room. A lifelong smoker and workaholic, John McKee had been floored by a heart attack five years earlier. The McKee clan-perhaps including a demoralized John himself-had long been waiting for the other shoe to drop. At age fifty-two, Steve McKee learned that he was his father's son more than he had ever hoped-he, too, has serious cardiovascular disease. Haunted by his father's seeming surrender to show more the condition, McKee set out to find the man who died before the son could know him. In so doing, what might he, Steve McKee, learn of himself? Chronicling the disorienting first days following John McKee's death, My Father's Heart is an extraordinary story of an all-too-ordinary scenario: A father dies, a son remains, and the loss casts a long shadow across a generation. Rich in evocative detail of time, place, and family, it is a powerful memoir of love, forgiveness, and finding oneself. show less

Member Reviews

Featured Recent Thumbs

All Ratings
1
1

1 review

sherrie87 81 reviews

This utterly heartbreaking memoir begins with the death of the author's father, due to a heart attack (his second) while the two of them are watching TV alone in 1969. The author goes on to describe the factors that led up to his father's fatal heart attack and strives to save himself from such a fate. However, he ultimately finds that hereditary can sometimes overcome all efforts- despite exceptional fitness, his doctpr tells him that he has developed heart disease and is at substantial risk for his own heart attack. This book includes descriptions of heart attack symptoms by survivors and extensive biographical information about the author and his family.

May 23, 2008

Ratings

ChuTrandinh 31 reviews

Nov 24, 2011

All Reviews