I was eighteen when my father died. I’d be exaggerating to say I never knew him. My mom made him leave when I was twelve, and I saw him a half dozen times between his departure and his death six years later. But he’d actually been thriving in my early childhood in Helena, Montana. He had a job then where he felt valued, kids were accumulating on the familiar pace of five per decade, and we had lower-middle-class financial stability. I remember driving in a giant Ford station wagon, delivering newspapers in the freezing pre-dawn darkness, watching him cry when particularly beautiful music played on the classical music station. He sang with a loud baritone that I inherited, and reliable pitch, which I did not. I relished his pleasure in throwing Sunday waffle parties for friends and neighbors. I also remember the stories he made up in the telling, in which we children were the main characters. I no longer remember my name in that fantasy world, other than the sibilant alliteration—savvy