Riding with the Ghost

A Memoir

By: Justin Taylor

Narrated by: Justin Taylor

An unflinching memoir from a writer reckoning with his relationship with his troubled father and the complicated legacy that each generation hands down to the next.

“Justin Taylor’s relentless, peripatetic, and tender search for reconciliation with his late troubled father blooms into a full-throated song of joy about his own life lived through music, teaching, travel, and literature.” (Lauren Groff, author of Florida)

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by Kirkus Reviews

When Justin Taylor was 30, his father, Larry, drove to the top of the Nashville airport parking garage to take his own life. Thanks to the intervention of family members, he was not successful, but the incident forever transformed how how Taylor thinks of his father and how he thinks of himself as a son.

Moving back and forth in time from that day, Riding with the Ghost captures the past’s power to shape, strengthen, and distort our visions of ourselves and one another. We see Larry as the middle child in a chilly Long Island family; as a beloved Little League coach who listens to kids with patience and curiosity; as an unemployed father struggling to keep his marriage together while battling long-term illness and depression.

At the same time, Taylor explores how the work of confronting a family member’s story forces a reckoning with your own. We see Taylor as a teacher, modeling himself after his dad’s best qualities; as a caregiver, attempting to provide his father with emotional and financial support, but not always succeeding; as a new husband, with a dawning awareness of his own depressive tendencies.

With raw intimacy, Riding with the Ghost lays bare the joys and burdens of loving a troubled family member. It’s a memoir about fathers and sons, teachers and students, faith and illness, and the pieces of our loved ones that we carry with us always.

©2020 Justin Taylor (P)2020 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Justin Taylor’s relentless, peripatetic, and tender search for reconciliation with his late troubled father blooms into a full-throated song of joy about his own life lived through music, teaching, travel, and literature. Riding with the Ghost is gorgeously layered and deeply felt." (Lauren Groff, author of Florida)

"An atmospheric, openhearted memoir of great range and ambition. Like his literary hero Denis Johnson, Taylor fearlessly swings from the gutter to the stars and back again in this precisely observed meditation on love and loss." (Jenny Offill, author of Weather)

"In propulsive readable prose, Justin Taylor does something that most people would find impossible: He delves through grief and trauma to find the true story of his own troubled, brilliant father, and to trace the ways that his father’s influence shaped and warped his life and his family. Without being at all polemical, Riding with the Ghost has much to teach us about masculinity, patriarchy, and family in America." (Emily Gould, author of Perfect Tunes)

Spectacular

A clear-eyed, wise, heartbreaking memoir of a father-son relationship full of trouble and love. There were moments when I was listening in my car that were so powerful I needed to pull over. Highly recommended.

Meditative and heartfelt story.

Justin Taylor’s Riding with the Ghost is a meditative, tender memoir. Self-reflective prose balanced with an intellectual exploration of loss, grief, and delve into one’s childhood versus adulthood self with regard to parent-child relationships. A haunting yet comforting reminder to have faith that we human beings are complex, ever evolving creatures responsible for nurturing our own legacies. Heartfelt , tender, accessible tone in audio narration from the author. Bravo all around.