In Alison Bechdel’s award-winning graphic memoir Fun Home, she describes her emotionally abusive dad as “an alchemist of appearance, a savant of surface, a Daedalus of decor” given his knack for home restoration and leading a double life as a gay man fixated on in teenage boys. No wonder the book is subtitled “A Family Tragicomic.” For the story of another bad dad, read The Great Stork Derby, based on an actual contest in which a husband pressures his wife to have babies for cash and, fifty years later, learns the true meaning of fatherhood. Read more about the book in NOVELS.
