At the age of 16, Wall Street Journal
editor McKee (The Call of the Game
) watched his 50-year-old father, John, drop dead of a massive heart attack. In this affecting memoir, he uses the trauma as a lens through which to view his family history. Early cardiac arrest was a hereditary constant for McKee's male relatives and an occupational hazard for postwar breadwinners like John, a World War II vet who smoked three packs a day, had a sedentary but hellishly stressful middle-management job and endured his first heart attack at age 44. McKee pens an homage to his father's way of life, with its dutifulness and web of family and community ties, but also a critique of its toll. Reacting against his father's apparent surrender, the author turns his life into a rebellion against the inevitability of heart attack. He eschewed a workaholic career for the creative life and maintained a fanatical fitness regimen—running, rowing, triathlons, all manner of health food diets and nutritional supplements—only to learn in middle age that cardiovascular disease had caught up with him. McKee includes illuminating medical lore about heart attacks and oral histories from survivors. But most of all, he discovers in the most ordinary way to die a perspective on how to live. (Feb. 1)
