In this โabsorbing and movingโ memoir, a scholar of childrenโs literature considers the relationship between fathers and sons, and between literature and life (Kenneth Gross, author of Puppet).
Through elliptical memories and reflections, Seth Lerer delves into his own evolution from boyhood to fatherhood, as well as his intellectual evolution through his lifelong love of reading. While presenting an intimate portrait of Lererโs life, Prosperoโs Son is about the power of books and theater, the excitement of stories in a young manโs life, and the transformative magic of words and performance.
Lererโs father, a teacher and lifelong actor, comes to terms with his life as a gay man. Meanwhile, Lerer himself grows from bookish boy to professor of literature and an acclaimed expert on the very childrenโs books that set him on his path. Only then does he learn how hard it is to be a fatherโand how much books can, and cannot, instruct him.
Throughout these intertwined accounts of changing selves, Lerer returns again and again to storiesโthe ways they teach us about discovery, deliverance, forgetting, and remembering.