The Broken King -- Michael Thomas

<p><b>From the author of <i>Man Gone Down</i>--a <i>New York Times</i> Top Ten Book of the Year and winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award--comes a deeply personal memoir of race, trauma, alcoholism, parenting, mental illness and ultimately hope in a portrait of three generations of Black American men</b></p><p>In 2007, Michael Thomas launched into the literary world with his award-winning first novel <i>Man Gone Down</i>, a beautiful and devastating story of a Black father trying to claim a piece of the American Dream. Called "powerful and moving . . . an impressive success," by Kaiama L. Glover on the cover of the <i>New York Times Book Review</i>, Thomas' debut introduced a writer of prodigious and rare talent. In his long-awaited encore and first work of nonfiction, <i>The Broken King</i>, Thomas explores fathers and sons, lovers and the beloved, trauma and recovery, success and failure in a unique, urgent, and timeless memoir. </p><p>The title is borrowed from T.S. Eliot's line in "Little Gidding" "If you came at night like a broken king," and the work ponders the process of being broken. Akin to Baldwin's <i>The Fire Next Time</i> or Nabokov's <i>Speak, Memory</i>, Thomas' memoir unfolds through six powerful, interlocking and overlaying sections focusing on the lives of five men: his father--a philosopher, Boston Red Sox fan, and absent parent; his estranged, lawless older brother; his two sons growing up in Brooklyn; and ultimately, heartbreakingly himself. At the