Customer Reviews

Chasing the Hawk: Looking for My Father, Finding Myself

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is even better than Pulitzer Prize winning books I have read and enjoyed. Being a reader of his father's books, Sheehan has written a compelling, inspiring and courageous book his father would be proud of. This book goes far beyond anything his father wrote. I spent the last 50 pages reading the book in tears. This book describes real life from the heart. It's recommended for anyone who has been a father, son, mother or daughter. Congratulations on a beautifully written book and I hope it gets the broad readership it so richly deserves.

I picked up this book inclined to not like it as another celebrity book, and a minor celebrity at that. I feared it would just be a son picking nits and blaming his father for the bad turn his life had taken. However, this book is an excellent story of a father-son relationship, personal redemption and the search for meaning in life. It is far easier to appreciate this book's excellence if you have no prior involvement with the father's work.

This is a wonderful story, marvelously written. I didn't expect much when I first picked it up - - another child of the famous capitalizing on their parent's fame - - but after a few pages I simply couldn't put it down. The book is captivating, and I hope we hear more from its talented author in the future. Thanks for sharing your story with us, Andrew!

Andrew Sheehan has written a magnificent love story. He has learned, through painful experience and wry memory, that his parents were not perfect, but decided---as an act of will--to love them anyway. With heartbreaking clarity and astonishing delicacy, he recounts his life as a loner in a large, Irish Catholic family. His description of his descent into alcoholism is searingly honest and harrowingly unflinching in its detail. His struggle for recovery, floating and cresting like Gregorian harmony to his father's struggle to find meaning in his life as he faces death, is magnificent. The courage that it must have taken to write this book, as well as the talent that made it possible, are grand.

If you grew up in a family, if you had a mother or a father, whether they were Irish or not, this is a must-read. Give it to everyone you know. I know I will be.

Wow! What a powerful book. What emotional exposure. The writing has such compelling cadence and wonderful unhackneyed metaphors.

The reconciliation in the final chapters between son and father is written with remarkable, nuanced grace.

Anyone living with an Alcohol problem will find resonant insights here as the author describes his struggles.

Andrew Sheehan writes well this rite-of-passage story of an alienated son making peace with his aging father. He also unblinkingly chronicles his own descent into drink as a young man, and the trail of broken relationships he left behind. At the close of the book, we are cheering for both Andrew and his father, "Dr. Runner" George, as they find peace and a measure of happiness with each other.

Both men are seekers; for a large part of his life, George combed through the works of the philosophers, and left and later returned to, the Catholic faith of his youth. As one of 12 children (what a brood, even for the post-WW II era!),George seeks love and attention which he felt lacking in his childhood,
as he was crowded in the late-middle of the group of children.

"The unexamined life is not worth living," one of the Greeks
tells us, and both men tend to examine their lives in great detail. Indeed, they both stop just short of navel gazing, an activity to which this reviewer is opposed. Too much examining can block one from living, I would put forward as a corollary to the philosopher.

That said, this worthwhile book is an addition to the literature of father-son conflicts. Its upbeat conclusion which surprise and warm you.

This book is a great read. As a runner, I was familiar with Dr. Sheehan's works, but unaware of his family life. Andrew has done a great job of telling the heart wrenching story of his relationship with his distant and unavailable father and his own evolution as a human being. The story is pertinent to all and will cause any father to re-evaluate his relationships.

I picked up this book thinking the theme of father-son relationship/s would be good for me to read but it was more than that..it was about the love of running and family relationships. I liked reading this book.

If... you are a babyboomer If... you are a runner.. and if your life was complicated by a fathers dominance and isolation then this book is for you!
ANDREW SHEEHAN tells the story of his famous father the late GEORGE SHEEHAN a doctor who's passion for running consumed not only a country but himself ,hes family and everyone around him.
THE authors eloquent discription of growing up in a large irish-catholic family,his long battle with alcohol,the abandment of a father.The nostalgia was at times so overwhelming it brought me to tears...because my life so closely mirrored that of andy sheehan
the church the rejection the Kennedys growing up in the 60's the BEATLES the war the drugs.this book will take you back to a place and time in our lives that made our generation so special

I really enjoyed this book on many levels...father and son...running... relationships etc. Wonderfully written.