"True to his title there are many fathers (along with a few prominent women) celebrated here, foremost his own father Joe Howard "Buzz" Taylor, as well as ancestors like Reuben Taylor, first of his Kentucky line, surrogate fathers including his Uncle Louis and best friend David Orr, and his son, now a father himself, continuing the generational saga. But recalling that the child is father of the man, the chief reason to welcome this book is for the insights it affords into Taylor's early life story, including nostalgic accounts of his childhood in and around Louisville, Kentucky, vivid portraits of the people who shaped his development, and his reckoning with the fraught history of the Civil War and his legacy as a southerner. Taylor says this may be as close to an autobiography as he is apt to write, which is all the more reason to cherish these sketches from the life of a true Kentucky literary treasure."
