I Am Sorry To Think I Have Raised a Timid Son

In this collection of essays, Russell examines people and places bound by themes of violence and masculinity—his own family of military veterans, a convention of Juggalos (extreme fans of the rap group Insane Clown Posse), a man who poisons himself regularly with deadly snake venom to become immune, Daniel Boone (the title is a quotation from Boone's biography), Amish baseball teams, a retired hockey "enforcer," and others—tied together by autobiographical sketches of his complicated relationship with his paranoid and difficult father. Russell displays a sense of being an outsider through all these journeys, including his journeys home. It's a dark, strange collection, usually interesting and occasionally horrifying. Reader Sean Pratt does a fine job with the cast of strange individuals Russell encounters; his dry tone does nothing to distance the listener from the material.