AUDIOBOOK
About
From PEN/Hemingway award winner Brando Skyhorse comes this stunning, heartfelt memoir in the vein of The Glass Castle or The Tender Bar, the true story of a boy's turbulent childhood growing up with five stepfathers and the mother who was determined to give her son everything but the truth.
When he was three years old, Brando Kelly Ulloa was abandoned by his Mexican father. His mother, Maria, dreaming of a more exciting life, saw no reason for her son to live his life as a Mexican just because he started out as one. The life of "Brando Skyhorse," the American Indian son of an incarcerated political activist, was about to begin.
Through a series of letters to Paul Skyhorse Johnson, a stranger in prison for armed robbery, Maria reinvents herself and her young son as American Indians in the colorful Mexican American neighborhood of Echo Park, California. There Brando and his mother live with his acerbic grandmother and a rotating cast of surrogate fathers. It will be over thirty years before Brando begins to untangle the truth of his own past, when a surprise discovery online leads him to his biological father at last.
From an acclaimed, prize-winning novelist celebrated for his "indelible storytelling" (O, The Oprah Magazine), this extraordinary literary memoir captures a son's single-minded search for a father wherever he can find one and is destined to become a classic. Title Info. Dedication. Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Closure
"Narrator Bronson Pinchot delivers this memoir with a wistful tone and dramatic timing…The result is an engaging memoir built on an emotional roller coaster of missed opportunities. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award."
"Wickedly compelling…By turns funny and wrenching,
the narrative is an unforgettable tour de force of memory, love, and
imagination."
"Skyhorse follows The Madonnas of Echo Park with an account of his own Los Angeles childhood in the Echo
Park neighborhood in a family so dysfunctional it seems to be
fictional…A
harrowing, compulsively readable story of one man's remarkable search
for identity."
"A beautiful, compassionate, but also hilarious and hair-raising tale of one boy's life, the lies and truths his mother told, and the damage and the magic she created. Brando Skyhorse is an irresistible writer with an incredible story."
"The details of Brando Skyhorse's life are as
outlandish and attention grabbing as his name. Imagine the kind of mother who
advertises you for adoption in the back of a magazine and then denies it to your
face or the kind of stepfather who calls his prison 'Arizona State,' as if
discussing his alma mater. Take This Man is a funny and harrowing
and touching portrait of the abyss in families between what we know we should
do and how our hearts lead us to behave."
"Take This Man is as astonishing a memoir as I've ever read.
Brando Skyhorse's beautifully told tale of his truly bizarre childhood and his
search for a father moved me in a way that few books have. I will never forget
Skyhorse's charismatic mother and grandmother, nor the tortured triangle the
three of them formed. I was reminded at times of Geoffrey Wolff's The
Duke of Deception, and also of The Glass Castle by
Jeanette Walls and The Tender Bar by J. R. Moehringer. But I
guarantee that this is a family story unlike any you've read before. It
deserves to become a classic."
"Brando Skyhorse's unputdownable Take This Man is
one of the most moving and mesmerizing memoirs I've ever read. I'm still
reeling. Its familial dysfunction rivals The Glass Castle, the
poetry of the language echoes This Boy's Life, and the bravery in
Skyhorse's search for answers, for a family, conjures up Wild. Yet
Skyhorse's memoir is wholly and uniquely his own. As his mother's mantra went:
'At least it's never boring.' And it never is. This is a miracu
When he was three years old, Brando Kelly Ulloa was abandoned by his Mexican father. His mother, Maria, dreaming of a more exciting life, saw no reason for her son to live his life as a Mexican just because he started out as one. The life of "Brando Skyhorse," the American Indian son of an incarcerated political activist, was about to begin.
Through a series of letters to Paul Skyhorse Johnson, a stranger in prison for armed robbery, Maria reinvents herself and her young son as American Indians in the colorful Mexican American neighborhood of Echo Park, California. There Brando and his mother live with his acerbic grandmother and a rotating cast of surrogate fathers. It will be over thirty years before Brando begins to untangle the truth of his own past, when a surprise discovery online leads him to his biological father at last.
From an acclaimed, prize-winning novelist celebrated for his "indelible storytelling" (O, The Oprah Magazine), this extraordinary literary memoir captures a son's single-minded search for a father wherever he can find one and is destined to become a classic. Title Info. Dedication. Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Closure
"Narrator Bronson Pinchot delivers this memoir with a wistful tone and dramatic timing…The result is an engaging memoir built on an emotional roller coaster of missed opportunities. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award."
"Wickedly compelling…By turns funny and wrenching,
the narrative is an unforgettable tour de force of memory, love, and
imagination."
"Skyhorse follows The Madonnas of Echo Park with an account of his own Los Angeles childhood in the Echo
Park neighborhood in a family so dysfunctional it seems to be
fictional…A
harrowing, compulsively readable story of one man's remarkable search
for identity."
"A beautiful, compassionate, but also hilarious and hair-raising tale of one boy's life, the lies and truths his mother told, and the damage and the magic she created. Brando Skyhorse is an irresistible writer with an incredible story."
"The details of Brando Skyhorse's life are as
outlandish and attention grabbing as his name. Imagine the kind of mother who
advertises you for adoption in the back of a magazine and then denies it to your
face or the kind of stepfather who calls his prison 'Arizona State,' as if
discussing his alma mater. Take This Man is a funny and harrowing
and touching portrait of the abyss in families between what we know we should
do and how our hearts lead us to behave."
"Take This Man is as astonishing a memoir as I've ever read.
Brando Skyhorse's beautifully told tale of his truly bizarre childhood and his
search for a father moved me in a way that few books have. I will never forget
Skyhorse's charismatic mother and grandmother, nor the tortured triangle the
three of them formed. I was reminded at times of Geoffrey Wolff's The
Duke of Deception, and also of The Glass Castle by
Jeanette Walls and The Tender Bar by J. R. Moehringer. But I
guarantee that this is a family story unlike any you've read before. It
deserves to become a classic."
"Brando Skyhorse's unputdownable Take This Man is
one of the most moving and mesmerizing memoirs I've ever read. I'm still
reeling. Its familial dysfunction rivals The Glass Castle, the
poetry of the language echoes This Boy's Life, and the bravery in
Skyhorse's search for answers, for a family, conjures up Wild. Yet
Skyhorse's memoir is wholly and uniquely his own. As his mother's mantra went:
'At least it's never boring.' And it never is. This is a miracu