Outsider: A Journey Into My Father's Struggle with Madness Hardcover - 2000

From the publisher

Nathaniel Lachenmeyer's childhood memories center around his warm, attentive father, a man whose exceptional mind earned him accolades as a sociology professor and author. But when Charles Lachenmeyer was stricken with paranoid schizophrenia, a disease that afflicts millions of Americans, his relationship with his family -- and to the world -- disintegrated. While most adolescents reject their parents as a universal rite of passage, Nathaniel's break from his father became permanent. The Outsider is the story of Nathaniel's attempt to reconnect with his father years after they were separated at the height of Charles's illness.

Convinced that his wife and the CIA were conspiring to control his thoughts, Charles left his family when Nathaniel was 11 years old. Over the next 14 years, this brilliant but deeply troubled man eventually fell to living on the streets, leaving a lasting impression on everyone he met. Soon after Nathaniel learned that his father's body had been found in a run-down apartment in Burlington, Vermont, he embarked on a journey to reconstruct his father's life before and after the onset of his illness. Weaving together the fragments of a haunted past, The Outsider is a deeply personal narrative that illuminates every man's quest to recapture the bond between father and son.