Who’s Your Daddy? 15 Powerful Stories About Fathers

Michael Hainey was 6 years old when his father, a star in the Chicago newspaper world, died under mysterious circumstances. Decades later, the loss still troubled him, and so he decided to investigate what happened that fateful night. What results is a poignant and powerful memoir about family, resilience, and memory.

Before he was the forty-fourth president of the United States, Barack Obama was a man searching for answers. Raised by his white American mother, he only knew his African father through the stories he was told—more myth than man. That is, until he learned that his father had died in a car accident, prompting an emotional odyssey across the world that helped him reconcile his divided past.

Frank Sinatra was an icon whose voice, style, and personality was adored by millions. To so many he was “Ol’ Blue Eyes” or “The Voice,” but to Tina Sinatra he was just “Dad.” In this unflinching account, Tina reveals a restless, lonely man whose many marriages and front-page dramas kept happiness just out of reach.

Alysia Abbott and her father, bisexual writer and activist Steve Abbott, were a dynamic duo living in 1970s San Francisco, a city bursting with gay men in the throes of a revolution. Years later, when AIDS begins to devastate the community and Steve falls ill, a teenage Alysia (now in New York) must choose between her newfound independence, or the responsibility of caring for her father.

Alan Cumming is a master of stage and screen. When UK television producers approached him to appear on a celebrity genealogy show in 2010, he enthusiastically agreed. But as the truth about his family history began to emerge, so did feelings and revelations about his complicated relationship with his father.

When famed writer Andrew Offutt died, his son, Chris, inherited three things: a desk, a gun, and more than a thousand pounds of pornographic fiction. When Chris begins to sort through his father’s papers, he finally finds an opportunity to get to know the father who was always just out of reach.

This one is for fans of THE LIARS’ CLUB and THE TENDER BAR. Set in the oil towns of 1970s Louisiana, Blaine Lourd’s memoir details his relationship with his larger-than-life father, “Puffer,” and his older brother, Bryan. In raw, confessional prose, Lourd explores the power and pain of family, and the way that our roots seem to follow us wherever we go.

The first in a series of six autobiographical novels, MY STRUGGLE is the modern reader’s answer to Proust, an existential and provocative work that follows the narrator as he grapples with the big issues of death, love, art, and fear, and the everyday realities of fatherhood, marriage, and manhood.

While Roth is best known for his fiction, PATRIMONY might just be his most emotional and thought-provoking work. As he watches his 86-year-old father suffer from a brain tumor that will inevitably kill him, Roth documents and details each stage of the fight, revealing a much larger history of stubbornness and survival.

Of the countless stars Hollywood has produced, few are as famous—or infamous—as Orson Welles. His film “Citizen Kane” is said to be the greatest of all time, and his work is studied by aspiring actors and directors all over the world. Many books have been written about him, but this is the one to read—a fully realized portrait of the man and the myth, written by his daughter.

While some fathers and daughters bond over football, fishing, or film, CNN correspondent Tom Foreman and his daughter, Ronnie, found common ground by running on it. When Ronnie asked if Tom would be willing to train for a marathon with her, the 51-year-old knew it would be hard and probably painful, but the prospect of bonding with his college-bound child was too good to pass up.

In THE DUKE OF DECEPTION, Geoffrey Wolff unravels the enigma of his Gatsbyesque father who supported himself with desperately improvised scams: exploiting employers, wives, and, finally, his own son. Somehow, while being an inveterate liar, Duke Wolff was also a very good father who falsified everything but love for his son.

Alexandra Styron is the youngest daughter of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist William Styron, a fascinating and difficult man who famously battled depression. Part memoir and part elegy, READING MY FATHER is the wise and graceful story of a daughter coming to know her father at last.