In this mem­oir, Zack Rogow tries to solve the mys­tery of the father he nev­er knew. Lee Rogow was a wide­ly pub­lished fic­tion writer, dra­ma crit­ic for the Hol­ly­wood Reporter, glam­orous man- about-town in Man­hat­tan of the 1950s, cap­tain of a sub­ma­rine-chas­er in World War II — and he died trag­i­cal­ly in a plane crash when his son Zack was only three years old.

To answer the rid­dle of who his father real­ly was, Zack Rogow’s Hug­ging My Father’s Ghost rein­vents the mem­oir genre. The author quilts togeth­er his father’s con­fi­den­tial writ­ings, vin­tage pho­tos from World War II and the 1950s, a let­ter his moth­er wrote his father after he died, and imag­i­nary con­ver­sa­tions between him­self and his dad. Zack Rogow explodes the con­ven­tions of the mem­oir, but nev­er los­es hold of the grip­ping sto­ry of his fam­i­ly and the pres­sures of the Jew­ish Amer­i­can immi­grant expe­ri­ence, with all its tri­umphs, beau­ty, humor — and tragedy. This book tells the sto­ry of one fam­i­ly and reflects on the lives of immi­grants in a way that res­onates universally.