Tender Bar: A Memoir

Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times , Esquire , The Los Angeles Times Book Review , Entertainment Weekly , USA Today , NPR's "Fresh Air," and New York Magazine

A Booksense PickA Borders New Voices FinalistWinner of the Books for a Better Life First Book Award

Raised by a single mother and desperate for a father figure, J. R. Moehringer turned to the bar on the corner when he was eight years old. The regulars—including J. R.'s uncle—taught him, tended him, and provided a kind of fathering-by-committee. Torn between the stirring example of his mother and the lurid romance of the bar, J. R. tried to forge a self somewhere in the center. But when it was time for J. R. to leave home, the bar became an increasingly seductive sanctuary, a place to return and regroup during his picaresque journeys. Time and again the bar offered shelter from failure, rejection, heartbreak—and eventually from reality.

In the grand tradition of landmark memoirs, The Tender Bar is suspenseful, wrenching, and achingly funny. A classic American story of self-invention and escape, of the fierce love between a single mother and an only son, it's also a moving portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man, and an unforgettable depiction of how men remain, at heart, lost boys.

"J. R. Moehringer has found a new perfect." ― Esquire

"Supremely great." ―Graydon Carter