Lament for a Father: The Journey to Understanding and Forgiveness

Marvin Olasky played catch with his father, Eli, only once--it didn't end well. Eli never laughed, rarely spoke with his son, and was periodically lambasted by his wife for his lack of ambition. How had a Harvard graduate failed to achieve all that he had once hoped for? Author Frederick Buechner confessed, "I dealt with the sad parts of my life by forgetting them." Seeing a danger in this, Olasky draws on his investigative journalist skills to uncover his father's past--facing Eli's pain and his own in order to understand and forgive. He follows Eli's story from his Orthodox Jewish childhood in Boston to his days as a commuter student at Harvard to his untold experiences in Germany following World War II to his embrace of Reconstructionist Judaism, describing a "spiritual and psychological death by one thousand cuts"--and discovering what he owes to his parents.