Thirty Rooms to Hide In: Insanity, Addiction, and Rock ‘n’ Roll in the Shadow of the Mayo Clinic - Tapa blanda

If you're looking for proof that the Great American Family Drama is alive and kicking, here it is. Luke Longstreet Sullivan's heart wrenching, poignant, and often hilarious family history is laid bare like a shattered bottle of bourbon. I wish more memoirs took the chances this one does. And reached such heights. This is a bravura work. -Peter Geye, author of Safe from the Sea

Author Luke Longstreet Sullivan has a simple way of describing his new memoir: \u201cIt\u2019s like The Shining . . . only funnier.\u201d Thirty Rooms to Hide In tells the astonishing story of Sullivan\u2019s father and his descent from one of the world\u2019s top orthopedic surgeons at the Mayo Clinic to a man who is increasingly abusive, alcoholic, and insane, ultimately dying alone on the floor of a Georgia motel room. For his wife and six sons, the years prior to his death were characterized by turmoil, anger, and family dysfunction; but somehow they were also a time of real happiness for Sullivan and his brothers, full of dark humor and much laughter.Through the 1950s and 1960s, the six brothers had a wildly fun and thoroughly dysfunctional childhood living in a forbidding thirty-room mansion, known as the Millstone, on the outskirts of Rochester, Minnesota. The many rooms of the immense home, as well as their mother\u2019s loving protection, allowed the Sullivan brothers to grow up as normal, mischievous boys. Against a backdrop of the times-the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, fallout shelters, JFK\u2019s assassination, and the Beatles-the cracks in their home life and their father\u2019s psyche continue to widen. When their mother decides to leave the Millstone and move the family across town, the Sullivan boys are able to find solace in each other and in rock \u2019n\u2019 roll. As Thirty Rooms to Hide In follows the story of the Sullivan family-at times grim, at others poignant-a wonderful, dark humor lifts the narrative. Tragic, funny, and powerfully evocative of the 1950s and 1960s, Thirty Rooms to Hide In is a tale of public success and private dysfunction, personal and familial resilience, and the strange power of humor to give refuge when it is needed most, even if it can\u2019t always provide the answers.