In the Name of the Father

by Tony Ardizzone

When Abraham Schwartz died he left his son with a perplexing legacy -- the name Tonto. In the Name of the Father is a novel deeply in the American grain that tells the story of the funny and painful transit to manhood accomplished (and endured) by Tonto Schwartz.  It's the story of an emotional search for a lost parent and for a way of living.  While young Tonto moves forward through successive rites of passage the psychological direction of the novel is backward in time as he struggles to understand the father he never knew. Set on Chicago's tough North Side, In the Name of the Father is a lean and elegant portrait of an American youth, a book about Chicago, Catholic education, first friends, and first loves.  Its hero is a young man gifted with passion who fights his way through the grim realities of his life to a remarkable resolution. This is a moving and inspirational story, the debut of a young writer who is an important new voice in American fiction.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1978

About the author

Tony Ardizzone was born and raised on the North Side of Chicago. He is the author of seven books of fiction, including The Arab’s Ox, an updated edition of his previously published interconnected collection of stories set in Morocco, Larabi’s Ox. The February 2018 release of The Arab’s Ox marks the 25th anniversary of the book’s publication. Ardizzone is also the author of four novels: The Whale Chaser, In the Garden of Papa Santuzzu, Heart of the Order, and In the Name of the Father. His short story collections include The Evening News and Taking It Home: Stories from the Neighborhood.

Ardizzone has been awarded two Individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Milkweed Editions National Fiction Prize, the Chicago Foundation for Literature Award for Fiction sponsored by the Friends of Literature, the Virginia Prize for Fiction, the Pushcart Prize, the Lawrence Foundation Award, the Bruno Arcudi Literature Prize, the Prairie Schooner Readers' Choice Award, the Black Warrior Review Literary Award in Fiction, and the Cream City Review Editors' Award in Nonfiction.

Ardizzone also edited the anthology The Habit of Art: Best Stories from the Indiana University Fiction Workshop. Previously he served as the managing editor of three volumes of the Intro series, published by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. After the series became dormant, as a member of AWP’s Board of Directors Ardizzone founded and launched the organization’s Intro Journals Project and served as its managing editor for the project’s first two years. In 2010 he wrote the foreword to the newly released paperback edition of Raymond DeCapite's classic novel The Coming of Fabrizze.

Reviews

[Jim Manis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tony was the judge in a writing contest I entered back in the late seventies, which I won. How could I not rate his book five stars? Kidding aside, it's a fine book.