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PREFACE TO THE TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

An author’s books are like children. We give them birth, send them forth into the world, and watch anxiously as they struggle to find their place amid the confusion and cacophony of life.

Letters to My Son was my literary firstborn. As all parents know, each child claims a special place in your heart. Letters to My Son has a clarity and earnest wonder that I would never achieve again. I love it dearly.

It also set me on a course that has shaped all my subsequent writing. Though it has a purity and a style all its own, it showed me that I could and should — indeed, I must — write from my best self, eschewing cynicism, irony, and literary cleverness. It told me I was a writer of the heart.

Now, twenty years and more than a dozen books later, Letters to My Son still watches over its literary siblings, demanding that they speak with empathy and caring, no matter what their voice or what their purpose.

It also has found its rightful place in the world.

It has become a trusted friend to single mothers who wish to pass a father’s words on to their sons, a guide to fathers looking to offer their sons a voice of clarity about life’s most important issues, and a companion for young men who want a thoughtful and caring helpmate on their journey toward a worthy manhood.

Several of its chapters have taken wing on the internet and been embraced by people across the globe. The chapter on “Travel” has become a staple on the blogs of young people everywhere. “Partners and Marriage” and “Falling in Love” have been used in wedding ceremonies around the world. And “The Spiritual Journey” has become an anthem for spiritual seekers, both within and outside traditional religious denominations and faiths. British prime minister David Cameron even quoted from Letters to My Son in his 2011 Father’s Day address to the nation on the first anniversary of his father’s passing. Truly, this literary child has made its way in the world.

In this twentieth anniversary edition I have not wanted to violate the freshness and wonder of the original by making substantial alterations to the text. There may be things I would now say differently or with different emphasis. But the book has a magic about it, and I have learned, through long experience, that where there is magic, whether human or literary, you do not intrude upon it, but honor its presence and try to serve as its shepherd.

So I have made just three significant changes in this edition.

I have added a chapter about being gay, an oversight in the initial book that has been pointed out to me by young men and fathers who feel that they or their sons were left out of the original edition’s otherwise broad embrace.

I have added a chapter on the difficulty of leaving one phase of life for another — an experience I have known in my own life and seen many times in the lives of others.

And I have included a final chapter, previously published in my book Simple Truths, that speaks with quiet eloquence about the mystery and majesty of life’s journey. It seems a fitting conclusion to this book born in wonder and gratitude for the inexpressible gift of fatherhood.

I hope this new edition finds favor in your eyes.

— Kent Nerburn

Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2014