A father’s mysterious disappearance fuels one writer’s quest for identity.
During his childhood, Nicholas Casey, Madrid bureau chief for The New York Times, received visits from his father. He would arrive from some faraway place where the ships on which he worked had taken him, regaling his son with endless stories. He had black curly hair like Nicholas’s and the beard he would one day grow. But then after Nicholas’s seventh birthday, he vanished. It was the beginning of a mystery that would lead the reporter to Cuba, South America and Los Angeles on a mission of selfhood.