Jack’s Boy: An Alcoholic Childhood

This harrowing memoir traces the arc of one young child’s love for his dad and family from innocence to the devastating reality of the father’s profound alcoholism. In short, frank and unsentimental chapters, Dold captures the stark emotional ruin of a life gone off the tracks, innocent people held in nightly bondage, and a beautiful world gone haywire.

Beyond the immediacy of this physical and emotional turmoil, Jack’s Boy paints a vivid picture of America in the 1950s, where families were assumed to be happy and nobody talked about their problems. Jack’s Boy is a disturbing portrait that will move readers with its revelation of broader truths about life lived in the shadow of alcoholism, leaving room for hope.