A son uncovers the remarkable secret life of his midwestern fatherâand his Nebraska cityâin this âbeguiling [and] deeply unusualâ memoir (The Boston Sunday Globe).
Nick Ripsâs son had always known him as a conservative midwesterner, dedicated, affable, bland to the point of invisibility. Upon his fatherâs death, however, Michael Rips returned to his Omaha family home to discover a hidden portfolio of paintingsâall done by his father, all of a naked black woman.
His solid Republican father, Michael would eventually discover, had an interesting past and another side to his personality. Raised in one of Omahaâs most famous brothels, Nick had insisted on hiring a collection of social misďŹts to work in his eyeglass factoryâand had once showed up in his sonâs high school principalâs ofďŹce in pajamas.
As Michael searches for the woman in the paintings, he meets, among others, an African American detective who swears by the clairvoyant powers of a Mind Machine, a homeless man with ďŹve million dollars in the bank, an underwear auctioneer, and a ďŹying trapeze artist on her last sublime ride. Ultimately, in his investigations through his Nebraska hometown, he will discover the mysterious womanâas well as a father he never knew, and a profound sense that all around us the miraculous permeates the everyday.
âWriting with similar pain and urgency as Nick Flynn in Another B******t Night in Suck City and August Kleinzahler in Cutty, One Rock, Ripsâ terse, flinty syntax perfectly embodies the hard-boiled nature of this nearly surreal true-life tale.â âBooklist
âAn amazing, beautiful bookâa study of a certain family in a certain place at a certain time that gives us, in stunning shorthand, the reality of America.â âJoan Didion, author of The White Album
âAt once a lyrical family portrait, a philosophical inquiry, a bittersweet evocation of a lost time and place, and an enthralling domestic mystery.â âSusan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief
âQuirky, funny, moving, and immensely readable . . . a brilliantly observed story about place, family, and race in America.â âRandall Kennedy