Beckett's Children A Literary Memoir

Rooted in Coffey's experience as an adoptee, this book is a lyrical blend of personal memoir, father-son dialogue, and literary investigation that probes the works of Irish writer Samuel Beckett and American poet Susan Howe in search of traces of their status as father and daughter, long rumored but never dealt with in print. With seeming inevitability, the real-time saga of Coffey's adult son, at moments on the run or incarcerated, lacerates the text with reports of life without parental connection in a cold America. Inherent within great literature are clues as to who we are and where we came from. Literature, or language itself, can serve "as a lifeline," as Coffey puts it, especially for those who might be lost and searching. As an adoptee, for decades Coffey looked to literature for traces of his own origin story and lineage, a heritage held in secret by a closed adoption system but which he was able to decipher in his own way, mostly through books and cultural signs.