Viva Lofton

What do you leave behind for a son you haven't met yet?

On September 16, 1999, after the first ultrasound, Lonnie Lazar sat down to write to the child who might finally be on the way. He had no name for him yet. After years of loss and hoping, he only knew he wanted to be a better father than the one he had.

Over the next twenty years, those letters grew into this book: a funny, raw, and wide-ranging memoir of fatherhood, written in real time as the world changed around it.

Adopted as a baby and orphaned of the mother who raised him, Lazar went looking for the woman who gave him up, and what he found rewrote his story. Along the way you'll meet a New Year's party for sixty friends in a Spanish castle, a Memphis-to-New Orleans road trip with a favor for Keith Richards, a San Francisco nightclub after midnight, and a young man's arrest in China in 1986. You'll see September 11 and the 2020 election through the eyes of a father worrying about the world his son will inherit.

Inside you'll find:

• Letters to a child written from hope, fear, and honesty
• A search for a birth mother and the family he never knew
• Road stories, music, travel, and unforgettable characters
• Unfiltered reflections on manhood, parenting, partnership, and what we owe our kids

It's candid, sometimes profane, and always personal. For fathers and sons, for anyone who has wondered about their own father, and for readers who love a big-hearted life story, Viva Lofton is an honest record and a love letter.

Start reading today.