Retired Los Angeles Superior Court judge Mohr examines issues of fatherhood in a coming-of-age memoir set in the mid-20th century.

The author reflects on his own experiences in a work that focuses on comparing the two father figures in his life. His biological father, TV and voice actor Gerald Mohr, struggled to find consistent work when the author was young, although he briefly achieved notoriety as the voice of private eye Philip Marlowe on the radio. Still, despite Gerald’s work struggles, he maintained a sense of positivity, delighting adults with well-delivered jokes that his young son never understood. Mohr’s father was often absent from his life, although the youngster often listened to his dad’s radio shows as he fell asleep each night. Eventually, the author’s mother divorced his dad and moved, along with the author, from Los Angeles to New York City. There, she met Stanley Dashew, a credit card industry pioneer, and by all accounts, Gerald’s opposite. Gerald was easygoing and charismatic, Mohr writes, while Stan was “imposing, the prototypical businessman”; Gerald was politically liberal, while Stan was mainly conservative. As Gerald’s career came to an end, Stan’s was just beginning. Amid his father-figure comparisons, Mohr weaves a lively, engaging story of a boy caught between two worlds. Throughout, the prose is accomplished and highly descriptive, and although some readers might grow frustrated with the book’s emphasis on everyday scenes, these underscore how an abiding sense of postwar American idealism sometimes protected the author from harsher realities of life. Entertainment industry anecdotes and touches of 1950s nostalgia effectively round out the memoir; for instance, a public relations executive’s comments about Gerald’s greatness as an actor and father show the tension between show business and reality.

A touching and earnest remembrance that celebrates the workaday and extraordinary experiences of a child of divorce.