Devin Galaudet - 10,000 Miles With My Dead FatherS Ashes;Or Mi Padre Es Muerto En La Bolsa

Praise for 10,000 Miles with my Dead Father , s Ashes

With asides spanning from his pot-smoking, pill-popping teenage years to his later adult failures as an average American man, thishoot of a memoir rings with themes that will appeal to many readers coming-of-age in the 1970s and 80s. A candid and humorous tale.

Kirkus

Riveting, funny, emotional. I laughed out loud and cried real tears.

Krista Vernoff , executive producer of Greys Anatomy ,
Shameless , and Charmed

Devin Galaudet writes that his dad wanted to lift off the lid to life for me and show me its flailing innards and thats what Galaudet does, himself, in these pageshe lifts the lid off a complicated, volatile, father-son relationship and shows us all that is flailing and painful and hilarious and poignant within. Gallaudets journey with his father is deeply, engrossingly, unique, yet also has much to say about what it means to come of age as a man in America. A compelling and unforgettable read.

Gayle Brandeis , author of The Art of Misdiagnosis:
Surviving My Mothers Suicide

How do you write a travel book about a serious topicwhile still keeping it fun and highly readable? I had no ideauntil I came across 10,000 Miles . This is a story that needs to be widely read.

Chris Guillebeau, New York Times bestselling author of
The Art of Non-Conformity

An achingly poignant odyssey consummately crafted and disguised as a personal family memoir.

Lon Milo DuQuette , author of My Life with the Spirits

[Devins] writing is creatively intriguing, well crafted, with a very strong narrative voice.

Alma Villanueva , author of Song of the Golden Scorpion

Devin Galaudet captures the wrenching, often funny intricacies of grieving for a less than perfect father. Love and violence, abandonment and slapstick comedy commingle in this poignant and real story of how we come to terms with our parents in their varied and often complex manifestations.

Kate Maruyama , author of Harrowgate

Devin Galaudet has taken on one of the toughest subjects a writerand a mancan attempt: coming to terms with his relationship to his father and summoning the courage for a final goodbye. Galaudet writes with a great eye for physical detail, compassion, intensity, and humor. 10,000 Miles with My Dead Fathers Ashes promises to be a guidebook for the rest of us who might undertake a similar emotional journey.

Kent Black , editor in chief at Palm Springs Life magazine

Galaudet writes with a voice that is vulnerable and even painful at times, but its also always entertaining and downright funny. Hes clearly an excellent storyteller and traveling around the world with him would undoubtedly be a blast! His writing is the next best thing.

Kenneth Shapiro , editor in chief of TravelAge West

Devin Galaudet tells his story of love and loss with humor and poignancy. This is a candid, moving work about a scared boy trying to find a way to be a grown man.

Telaina Eriksen , 2010 and 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee

Anyone whos scattered a parents ashes knows it is a confusing mix of sadness and irony. Devin captures both perfectly.

Peter Hancoff , writer, producer, troublemaker

Truly moving, cohesive, and rich in wry cynicism, Devins writing is taut and can teach us all something about the love a son has for his father,

Kat Kambes , writer

In small details like finding parking, Galaudet reveals the inner landscape of losing a parent, interspersing dark humor to give the reader the space to breathe through the intimacy of grief. Galaudets travel memoir shows us that no matter how far you travel the language of grief and compassion are the same.

Angela M. Brommel , author of Plutonium & Platinum Blonde

This is a Genuine Vireo Book

A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books
453 South Spring Street, Suite 302
Los Angeles, CA 90013
rarebirdbooks.com

Copyright 2018 by Devin Galaudet

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address:
A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department
453 South Spring Street, Suite 302
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Set in Minion

epub isbn : 9781644280058

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Galaudet, Devin, author.
Title: 10,000 Miles with my Dead Fathers Ashes : Or Mi Padre es Muerto
en la Bolsa / Devin Galaudet.
Description: First Trade Paperback Original Edition | A Vireo Book |
New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books, 2018.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781947856165
Subjects: LCSH Galaudet, Devin. | Galaudet, DevinFamily. | Fathers and sonsBiography. | FathersDeath. | SpainDescription and Travel. |
BISAC BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary
Classification: LCC HQ755.85 .G41 2018 | DDC 306.76/620922dc23

For Shea to understand your exceptional yet flawed family tree.

Contents

Chapter 1

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your dads dead. She spit it out in one piece. I stood in my living room in my underwear and bare feet with the phone glued to my ear. The gardener was outside my window using one of those contraptions that made an incessant grinding noise, but there was no doubt as to what I heard. And I knew it was true even though I hadnt told her who I was.

Is this Devin? shed asked.

And Id responded, Whos calling?

Dad taught me early not to offer too much. Maybe it was a collection agency or someone I had knocked up, or one of fifty other things I did not want to deal with at the time. I still answered the phone this way, likely from some residual fear I clung to that the world was not a friendly place, even though my life had been content for ages. I suppose old habits die hard.

The sensation swarmed up my body. I launched into big, uncontrollable, heaving sobs that left me shaking. Every time I slowed down, the crying returned. My reaction surprised me, as I had decided that Dad was nothing more than a distant pile of unresolved resentments. His death had been long expected and perhaps overdue, at least in the land of intellect.

My emotional terrain, however, was another story.

The call came from a woman named Cathy, who described herself as Dads wife of fifteen years. She confided that she was thirty years his junior and that he helped raise her two daughters. Dad had died of a heart attack two weeks prior, lying on his stomach with a cigarette in his hand in their trailer in St. George, Utah, while Cathy was at work. Nothing seemed wrong when she left him in front of the television.

He had told Cathy several times that when he died, there was to be no funeral. He had instructed that no one from his family should know about his death until after he had been cremated. His dying wish was that he be scattered off the coast of Cdiz, Spainto return home while Ave Maria played. Really, he wanted to be sent into outer space on a rocket, but he knew that was not going to happen. Cathy sighed before and after speaking, her words spilling out in one long, struggling breath.

I shook my head and gulped for air between tears. Dad wanted to return home to Spain? He wasnt from Spain. He was French, German, and Irishand to my knowledge, he had never even been out of the United States. As for Ave Maria, he would not be caught dead in a church. And hed been living in a trailer park in Utah? He was a city guy.