Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free. —Leonard Cohen
A 73-year old man is visited by his grown daughter in rural central Oregon. Over too much whiskey, he agrees to write down his life story if she’ll be his editor, a story she knows is colored with a childhood handicap, the grit of poverty, and a history of inflicting domestic violence. Two months later he dies suddenly from a heart attack, and sets a whirlwind of conflict in motion that threaten his grown children’s relationship with one another, and in the memory he leaves behind. Told in third person omniscient, the story follows Ron and his daughter, exploring identity by revealing the interplay of the stories we keep and how they define our life and our memory once we’re gone.
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