In Shadow Man, Margaret Chula brings her father out of the shadows where he had been since 1957, the day her mother packed their five children–all under the age of ten–into the car and drove away. Over the years, Margaret comes to accept the differences between a mother who wants China cups with saucers and a father who’s content with a Budweiser. Through writing about these awkward, often heartbreaking, interactions with her estranged father, she discovers that there’s more than one truth and that each of us must find our own.

Advance Praise:

Shadow Man is a deeply touching portrayal of love, loss, and forgiveness.

–Penelope Scambly Schott, Oregon Book Award for Poetry

Through Chula’s insights, we as readers can understand our own fraught relationships with parents. As adults facing honest memory, we can arrive at the grace of reconciliation that she shows is possible and essential for our own serenity.

–Bill Siverly, author of Nightfall