Brothers

Here is a tapestry of stories about the complex and uniquerelationship that exists between brothers. In this book, some ofour finest authors take an unvarnished look at how brothers admireand admonish, revere and revile, connect and compete, love and warwith each other. With hearts and minds wide open, and, in somecases, with laugh-out-loud humor, the writers tackle a topic thatis as old as the Bible and yet has been, heretofore,overlooked.

Contributors range in age from twenty-four to eighty-four, andtheir stories from comic to tragic. Brothers examines andexplores the experiences of love and loyalty and loss, of altruismand anger, of competition and compassion—the confluence ofthings that conspire to form the unique nature of what it is to beand to have a brother.

“Brother.” One of our eternal and quintessentialterms of endearment. Tobias Wolff writes, “The good luck ofhaving a brother is partly the luck of having stories totell.” David Kaczynski, brother of “TheUnabomber”: “I’ll start with the premise that abrother shows you who you are—and also who you are not.He’s an image of the self, at one remove . . . You are a‘we’ with your brother before you are a‘we’ with any other.” Mikal Gilmore refers tobrotherhood as a “fidelity born of blood.”

We’ve heard that the apple doesn’t fall far from thetree. But where do the apples fall in relation to each other? Andare we, in fact, our brothers’ keepers, after all?

These stories address those questions and more, and are, likethe relationships, full of intimacy and pain, joy and rage, burdensand blessings, humor and humanity.