Brando Skyhorse made his literary debut with The Madonnas of Echo Park, a novel in stories. Here he returns to the real Echo Park of his boyhood in a stunning memoir of emotional dysfunction and hard-won understanding.
When Skyhorse was three, his father left the family, driven out by his mother's manipulative narcissism. Maria convinced the boy that her new lover, a convict named Paul Skyhorse Johnson, was actually his father. The relationship ended soon enough, replaced by the next and then the next. By the time Skyhorse reached his teens, there were six of them, many of whom Maria married without divorcing the previous one, and all of whom Skyhorse was expected to call "Dad." At age 16 he learned he wasn't Indian but Mexican, with an invented name and a real father he'd never heard of.
Maria's emotional inconsistency and the loss of one father after another left Skyhorse with chronic depression. A gifted child, he was accepted into Stanford University but barely graduated after struggling socially. He moved to New York but could not sustain a relationship with his girlfriend. He still struggles with fear about his own potential to be a loving parent and partner. Skyhorse does not shy away from the head-spinning dysfunction of his childhood, nor does he gloss over his emotional pain. But this memoir succeeds as art because the real story is in his effort to find a father, to understand and to forgive. And it is a story beautifully told--often funny, always moving and with his writerly gifts on full display. --Jeanette Zwart, freelance writer and reviewer