Book Club

Join us on Thursday, June 4, at 6:30 pm, with the author Peter E. Talty, to discuss his book The Anatomy of a Pummeled Life.

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About the Book

This is the true story of a man’s life that was remarkable in terms of how tragic it was. I know this is true because he was my youngest brother Pat or Patrick. We were close until the last five or so years of his life when we became estranged. I now understand why he stopped calling or emailing me, but it was through the research and the writing of this book about Pat’s difficult life that I now get it. Simply stated, I was not my brother’s keeper. Instead, I was one of his many pummelers.
His path through life was strewn with loss, disappointment, failure, mistakes, poor judgment, conflicts with others, unemployment, depression, many health crises, poverty, personal struggles, and loneliness. It was not a life path most of us could travel without great suffering as did he. To be clear, my pummeling of Pat was not physical, it was always verbal. It was the typical kidding and teasing that happens amongst siblings. For most of his life Pat would laugh as much as the rest of us at my pummelings, but that changed. He stopped laughing, and then he withdrew from me both physically by moving away, and mentally by no longer laughing. Sadly, I did not realize that I was hurting him with my pummeling antics. Crazy!

It is now too late to apologize. Pat died in California on February 9, 2008. But his life story needs to be told, and I am honored to be the one to do tell it. We did not realize the three great burdens that he carried throughout most of his life. We only knew of one of his burdens. The other two became apparent to me as I examined his life far more closely than I ever did before. Why I did not see it is a mystery, but now that I know what he carried, I want everyone to know the hard road he traveled.