“I was at the foot of his grave, and as they lowered his coffin into the ground, the tombstone came into view and what I saw was my name,” Alexie says. “The weight of that moment really hit me— the good and the bad of being named for your father, the tremendous pressure, and the weirdness of seeing my name on that tombstone. It hit me hard.” Sherman Alexie Sr. had been a bookish and loving man, but also an alcoholic who would disappear for days at a time. In the years immediately following his death, his son finished what would become his bestselling— and to date his only— YA novel, which Megan Tingley, his publisher, calls a “cultural phenomenon”: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Alexie’s first YA novel won the 2007 National Book Award in the young people’s literature category; eight years after publication, it still appears regularly on bestseller lists. Continue reading from ResearchItCT

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