Oedipus Road

On March 30, 1992, Tom Dodge lost his stepfather and inherited the duty of caring for his mother, a woman he confesses he never got to know. Suddenly he was confronted with the extent to which she had slipped into the fog of Alzheimer’s. During his childhood, Dodge was never allowed to bring up the topic of his birth, but his mind whirled with questions: Who was my real father? Where was he? Who am I? Now, even if he summoned the courage to ask for the truth, would she be able to tell him?

This memoir, interweaving the twin themes of adult responsiblity for a parent suffering from Alzheimer’s and the search for a birth parent, is a painful account, raw with emotion, of an alienated adolescence. But it is also a nostalgic look back at life in small-town Texas in the 1940s and 1950s, a life where young boys frolicked in the swimming hole and worked in the family garden. Oedipus Road is a timeless and timely, funny and heart-breaking, evocative account of one man’s journey down the road of self-discovery.