The Brotherhood of Joseph

Last night a fever woke me in the dark—the trembled physical brand of fever, yes, but also the soul-er variety, the stir within that whispers: Get up.

I got up.

I'd left the galleys for Brooks Hansen's upcoming memoir, The Brotherhood of Joseph: A Father's Memoir of Infertility and Adoption in the 21st Century, on the downstairs couch. It had arrived via Fed Ex the day before, and in between what I was supposed to be doing on Friday, I was stealing time with it—caught up in the story's spiral, in Brooks' searing, daring prose, in the shout and the song of the life Brooks has been living since I saw him last, perhaps 11 years ago, when he was a much-touted young novelist at Bread Loaf and I was a yearning wannabe. If I could have read Brooks' memoir cover to cover Friday, I would have, but real life intervened, and so this morning, a little hot, a little cold at the same time, I crawled downstairs to finish the story.

BROTHERHOOD is a book, a real book. So knuckled into, so honest, so entirely cinematic and yet, I'm sure of this, because I know a little something about Brooks, so true. It is the story of his search for family. It is the story of all the rock-faced moutains two people choose to tunnel through to find a boy named Theo.

I guess I'm celebrating that today—the achievement of the book itself, which is due out in June, and the triumph of the Hansen family. I'm celebrating the discovery of a book I loved, this reawakening in the height of a fever.