THE MIGHTY FRANKS

A captivating debut about growing up and getting out from underneath a looming, ever-present shadow, and the ways in which our families shape us, for better or worse.

Even under the best circumstances, childhood is a tricky game of hopscotch from one challenge to the next. A misfit at home, bullied at school, where does a boy turn when, even as early as five, he relates more to the adults in his life than the kids populating the playground? In Michael's case, he found refuge in the company of his beguiling Aunt Hankie, a larger-than-life Hollywood screenwriter with a flair for the theatrical. Aunt Hankie provided undivided love and attention and encouraged Michael's precocious creativity and his blooming interest in the finer things, offering him the space to be who he couldn't be outside the confines of her embrace. As the gravity with which she held the entire family in her orbit, began to shift in increasingly unpredictable, volatile ways, it became apparent to the rest of the family that the gift of her love was a Trojan Horse – much danger was hidden out of sight. And as Michael tries to move away from the deeply complicated, filial role Aunt Hankie spent years cultivating, the family reaches their breaking point and Michael must reconcile the aunt he once cherished more than anything with the now sinister, manipulative woman he realizes her to be.

Conjuring Sean Wilsey's Oh the Glory of it All and Andre Aciman's Out of Egypt, with a hint of Grey Gardens, Michael Frank offers this simultaneously heartbreaking and compassionate portrait of a family buckling under the weight of one woman's erratic and outsized personality. A coming-of-age memoir marked by the singularly strange relationship that would come to define Michael's childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.

Michael Frank's short fiction and essays have appeared in The Yale Review, Salmagundi, Glimmer Train, The New York Times Magazine, and Tablet among other places, and they have been anthologized in “Mother Knows: 24 Tales of Motherhood” and “Not For Bread Alone: Writers on Food, Wine, and The Art of Eating.” His fiction has been presented at Symphony Space's Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story, and his travel writing has been collected in “Italy: The Best Travel Writing from The New York Times.” As a Los Angeles Times book critic for nearly ten years, Frank covered literary fiction and biography, Jewish and Italian history, gastronomy, and art history. He has written frequently for The New York Times on architecture and culture.