When I stopped by a bookstore outside of Santa Barbara at this time last year, the shelves had many titles of interest, except one - mine. My father and son memoir had just been published and it was nowhere in sight.

I had given a reading the day before...

The port city of Cochin, in the equatorial Kerala area of southwest India, has seen all kinds of foreign influences over the years. Vasco Da Gama, the Portuguese explorer was there, as were the Dutch, Jews and Chinese, all mixing into the spicy local curry of Hinduism and Islam. Still,...

It's a month after my mother has died, October 2002. My father and I have just pulled into the Mount Ararat Cemetery in Farmingdale, on the flat south shore of Long Island. We pass through iron gates under a Star of David and cruise past row after row of headstones...

What is it about fathers that make them so predictable? Father's Day lumbers up to your calendar and what do you buy the old man? What do you say to him? Dads just aren't as expressive as moms. They can be, heaven forbid, a little dull. That all changed for...