A Council of Dads

Classmate Bruce Feiler has a new book coming out. Bruce's new book is about his battle with cancer and his decision to ask men in his life to step in to be fathers to his children in the event he lost his battle. When classmates publish books, I usually include a little blurb about them, and that's about it. This time, I would like to say a little more.

As Class Secretary, I learn a lot about classmates. Most of it I print. Some of it I don't. I know that Bruce is not our only classmate to have been touched by cancer in the last few years. The battles I know about have been waged with ferocity, grace and dignity. They are, for me, an inspiration.

Given our stage of life, it does not surprise me that our class has had to wrestle with the mortality of our parents, our children and ourselves. Given who is in our class, I guess it should not surprise me that someone has written a book about it. I look forward to reading Bruce's book.

The Council of Dads

My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me

A moving, illuminating new work from New York Times bestselling author Bruce Feiler that touches on life and death, love and fatherhood, and offers inspiration for us all.

Bruce Feiler was a young father when he was diagnosed with cancer in 2008. He instantly worried what his death might mean for his daughters. “Would they wonder who I was? Would they wonder what I thought? Would they lack for my approval, my discipline, my voice?”

Three days later he came up with a stirring idea of how he might give them that voice. He would reach out to six men, from all the passages in his life, and asked them to be present through the passages in his daughters’ lives. And he would call this group of men, “The Council of Dads.”

“I believe my daughters will have plenty of opportunities in their lives,” he wrote to these men. “They’ll have loving families. They’ll have welcoming homes. They’ll have each other. But they may not have me. They may not have their dad. Will you help be their dad?”

The Council of Dads is the inspiring story of what happened next. Mixing the harrowing tale of his treatment with the uplifting lessons of these men–“Approach the Cow,” “Pack Your Flip-Flops,” “Live the Questions,” “Harvest Miracles”–Feiler’s account is touching, funny, and ultimately a deeply moving account of parenthood, loss, and love.

Along the way he paints vivid portraits of his father, his two grandfathers, and various father figures in his life to explore the changing role of fatherhood in America. He mixes these with an intimate, highly personal chronicle of his “Lost Year” battling cancer and reconstructing his leg– an ordeal, like Jacob wrestling with an angel in the Book of Genesis, leaves him marked and transformed by the most profound questions of the human spirit.

The Council of Dads is the work of a master storyteller confronting the most difficult experience of his life and emerging with a book of wisdom, comfort, and hope that will change the way parents relate to their children, their friends, and their own lives.