SHORTLISTED for the 2022 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize
A tender memoir of fathers and sons, love and loss, and learning to fill boots a size too big.
Dan Robson’s father is a builder, a fixer. A man whose high-school education is enough not only to provide for his family, but to build a successful business. Rick Robson holds things up. When he dies, nothing in his son’s world feels steady anymore. In a very real sense, the home his father had built is suddenly fragile. Without its natural caretaker, the house will fall to pieces—and his family shows all the same signs of crumbling.
Tender and unflinching, Measuring Up is a story of love, mourning, and what it means to use your calloused hands to make the world around you a better place to live.