The Harris Men

RM Johnson's extraordinary debut is a stirring family portrait that resonates with emotion and wit, as a father faces death -- and the three sons he abandoned so many years before.

"Mr. Harris, I'm sorry, but you have cancer." Although devastated to learn he has just one year to live, fifty-five-year-old Julius Harris has always known that the day would come when he would pay for walking out on his wife and three children twenty years earlier. Now, with a sudden and passionate determination to make his family whole again, Julius begins trying to find a way back to his sons.

Caleb, the youngest, struggling to support a son and make his way in arelentless world, couldn't care less about his own absentee father. Middleson Marcus can't abide even his father's memory, which gets in the wayof his committing to the one woman who has turned his life around. And Austin, Julius' eldest child, so adores what he remembers of his father that he's following in his footsteps, abandoning his wife and children justas Julius had done.

Inspired by RM Johnson's own fragile family history, The Harris Men is his poignant exploration of the increasing problem of absentee fathers -- and of the compromises made by the families they leave behind. As the Harris men grapple with their fears and their choices, Johnson gets to the very heart of what it means to be a man.

RM Johnson lives in Chicago, where much of his time is spent writing. The Harris Men is his first novel, and he is at work on his second, Father Found.