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Playing with Dynamite: A Memoir
Sharon Harrigan’s father was larger than life, a brilliant but troubled man who blew off his hand with dynamite before she was born and died in a mysterious and bizarre accident when she was seven. The story of his death never made sense. How did he really die? And why was she so sure that asking would be dangerous? A series of events compel her to find the answers, collecting other people’s memories and uncovering her own. Her two-year odyssey takes her from Virginia to Detroit to Paris and finally to the wilds of northern Michigan where her father died. There, she discovers the real danger and has to confront her fear.
Playing with Dynamite is about the family secrets that can distance us from each other and the honesty that can bring us closer. It’s about a daughter who goes looking for her father but finds her mother instead. It’s about memory and truth, grieving and growing, and what it means to go home again.
"A warm, engaging read about the ways in which memory distorts our understanding of family"--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"For much of her life, Sharon Harrigan's father was an idea, a concept, a myth. What happens when she finally allows him to be a real person, with real complications? Through frank and fiercely honest prose, Harrigan comes to realize that whatever remained unsolved would stay unsolved until she asked herself the right questions and discovered herself anew."--Debra Gwartney, author of Live Through This, finalist for the National Critics Circle Award
"This memoir hit me in the gut and made me feel all kinds of complicated, lost in the wilderness of the human heart, but this much is clear: Sharon Harrigan writes with grace and unflinching honesty."--Benjamin Percy, author of The Dark Net
"In Playing with Dynamite, Sharon Harrigan is, by turns, both Telemachus and Odysseus. Her story is both epic and intimate."--Nick Flynn, author of The Reenactments
Playing with Dynamite is about the family secrets that can distance us from each other and the honesty that can bring us closer. It’s about a daughter who goes looking for her father but finds her mother instead. It’s about memory and truth, grieving and growing, and what it means to go home again.
"A warm, engaging read about the ways in which memory distorts our understanding of family"--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"For much of her life, Sharon Harrigan's father was an idea, a concept, a myth. What happens when she finally allows him to be a real person, with real complications? Through frank and fiercely honest prose, Harrigan comes to realize that whatever remained unsolved would stay unsolved until she asked herself the right questions and discovered herself anew."--Debra Gwartney, author of Live Through This, finalist for the National Critics Circle Award
"This memoir hit me in the gut and made me feel all kinds of complicated, lost in the wilderness of the human heart, but this much is clear: Sharon Harrigan writes with grace and unflinching honesty."--Benjamin Percy, author of The Dark Net
"In Playing with Dynamite, Sharon Harrigan is, by turns, both Telemachus and Odysseus. Her story is both epic and intimate."--Nick Flynn, author of The Reenactments
- GenresMemoirNonfiction
248 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2017
4 people are currently reading
679 people want to read
About the author
Sharon Harrigan
3 books31 followersSharon Harrigan is the author of the novel Half (2020) and the memoir Playing with Dynamite (2017). She has published widely in places such as the New York Times (Modern Love) and the Virginia Quarterly Review. She teaches creative writing at WriterHouse, a literary center in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she lives with her family.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 17, 2018
Who we are is a complicated thing. Interactions influence perceptions, and perceptions influence memories. Having lost her father in a tragic accident when she was only seven, author Sharon Harrigan attempts to unravel the mystery of the man her father was in the powerful new memoir Playing with Dynamite. “I was relieved when he died,” her brother wrote her in an email. “It’s terrible to say, but it’s true.”
The email causes her to question her own memories of the father who had died decades earlier and she set forth on a fact-finding journey in the fall of 2013 from her home in Virginia back to Detroit and northern Michigan where she grew up. Informed by interviews with those who knew her father best, the memoir expertly weaves Harrigan’s own life story with memories shared by her family. And in the process of learning more about her dad, Harrigan comes to more fully know herself and other members of her family.
“If we want to find out anything, we have to ask,” Harrigan writes, and so she does. Her mother, brother, sister, and uncle contribute countless tales—many of which are astonishing—to clear the air and breathe life into a ghost. The stories of how he met her mother, of how he would treat his children—including Harrigan herself—of his intense work ethic and intellectual curiosity are colorful and insightful but shift or change depending on the teller. If there is one definite Harrigan learns, it is that truth is subjective.
Facts, Harrigan discovers through her quest, don’t often fit the picture she had assembled. “I don’t know anything,” she says to her uncle regarding events he believed were common knowledge to the family. So much of her father’s life and character were misremembered, completely unknown, or perhaps even intentionally forgotten. Partial truths and imagined truths make completely knowing someone a challenge, if not impossible. More so when that person lives on only through memories and photographs, as is the case with Harrigan’s father.
The compelling mysteries surrounding the circumstances of her father’s death and how, years earlier, he’d lost a hand “playing with dynamite” offer satisfying, surprising conclusions. That knowledge makes not only for entertaining and heart-wrenching narratives, but for revealing glimpses into the man she’s desperate to know. As she explores, the facts seem to change and this alters her sense of connection to her father and her own sense of identity. As Harrigan struggles with her changing reality, she asks profound questions: “How often is the way we see ourselves different from how the world perceives us?” and “If my memories change, will I change too?”
Harrigan’s journey is beautiful, emotional. “I went looking for my father. And found my mother instead,” she writes. he discovers the significance of her mother’s “room of one’s own” at the local Y, of the reservations her mother felt in marrying her father, and of the challenges she endured through that marriage.
But Harrigan also discovers more about herself. Decades after her father’s tragic passing, she comes to a deeper understanding of who she is—intellectually curious and sometimes dangerously reckless—through knowing more of where she came from. “I’d been running my whole life,” she writes, “without stopping to pick up the pieces of myself I’d left behind.” Her story—while just that, her story—is intoxicatingly relatable. Missed connections. Unasked questions. The desire to know our family, loved ones, and selves better. Her story is our story, too. And it’s a gift: through knowing hers, we can feel inspired to relearn who we are as well.
The email causes her to question her own memories of the father who had died decades earlier and she set forth on a fact-finding journey in the fall of 2013 from her home in Virginia back to Detroit and northern Michigan where she grew up. Informed by interviews with those who knew her father best, the memoir expertly weaves Harrigan’s own life story with memories shared by her family. And in the process of learning more about her dad, Harrigan comes to more fully know herself and other members of her family.
“If we want to find out anything, we have to ask,” Harrigan writes, and so she does. Her mother, brother, sister, and uncle contribute countless tales—many of which are astonishing—to clear the air and breathe life into a ghost. The stories of how he met her mother, of how he would treat his children—including Harrigan herself—of his intense work ethic and intellectual curiosity are colorful and insightful but shift or change depending on the teller. If there is one definite Harrigan learns, it is that truth is subjective.
Facts, Harrigan discovers through her quest, don’t often fit the picture she had assembled. “I don’t know anything,” she says to her uncle regarding events he believed were common knowledge to the family. So much of her father’s life and character were misremembered, completely unknown, or perhaps even intentionally forgotten. Partial truths and imagined truths make completely knowing someone a challenge, if not impossible. More so when that person lives on only through memories and photographs, as is the case with Harrigan’s father.
The compelling mysteries surrounding the circumstances of her father’s death and how, years earlier, he’d lost a hand “playing with dynamite” offer satisfying, surprising conclusions. That knowledge makes not only for entertaining and heart-wrenching narratives, but for revealing glimpses into the man she’s desperate to know. As she explores, the facts seem to change and this alters her sense of connection to her father and her own sense of identity. As Harrigan struggles with her changing reality, she asks profound questions: “How often is the way we see ourselves different from how the world perceives us?” and “If my memories change, will I change too?”
Harrigan’s journey is beautiful, emotional. “I went looking for my father. And found my mother instead,” she writes. he discovers the significance of her mother’s “room of one’s own” at the local Y, of the reservations her mother felt in marrying her father, and of the challenges she endured through that marriage.
But Harrigan also discovers more about herself. Decades after her father’s tragic passing, she comes to a deeper understanding of who she is—intellectually curious and sometimes dangerously reckless—through knowing more of where she came from. “I’d been running my whole life,” she writes, “without stopping to pick up the pieces of myself I’d left behind.” Her story—while just that, her story—is intoxicatingly relatable. Missed connections. Unasked questions. The desire to know our family, loved ones, and selves better. Her story is our story, too. And it’s a gift: through knowing hers, we can feel inspired to relearn who we are as well.
September 7, 2017
There are the stories we tell ourselves about our lives and the stories we discover if we’re brave enough to ask questions. This is the journey Sharon Harrigan takes in her memoir Playing with Dynamite. Structured like the Odyssey, a book her brother read to her as a child, Sharon’s quest begins as a search for her father –a man who died when she was only seven. A man who is both mythos (a superhuman one-armed welder who can drive with no hands), and absent memory.
Along the way Sharon discovers why her family hates police and the FBI, how her father blew off his hand with a stick of dynamite, and what really happened on the night of his death. But more importantly, she comes to realize the influence of DNA on personality and how children repeat the paths of their parents even when they don’t know them. With each revelation, distance between family members shrinks as a family narrative is shaped from the disparate memories of relatives who live miles apart.
Sharon deftly handles both time and the portrayal of salt-of the-earth family members whose lives are gritty and tough. She treats her characters with compassion and doesn’t let herself off the hook as she searches for the truth. Her prose is beautiful, lyrical, and confident.
If you want to read or write memoir with heart and compassion, read Playing with Dynamite. If you want to understand how time and place influence the lives we live and the legacies that follow, read this book. If you want to reclaim a lost family member and need a map to follow, read this book. If you want to take a journey that will make you laugh and cry as you glide along beautifully crafted sentences, read this book. In other words, just read this book.
Along the way Sharon discovers why her family hates police and the FBI, how her father blew off his hand with a stick of dynamite, and what really happened on the night of his death. But more importantly, she comes to realize the influence of DNA on personality and how children repeat the paths of their parents even when they don’t know them. With each revelation, distance between family members shrinks as a family narrative is shaped from the disparate memories of relatives who live miles apart.
Sharon deftly handles both time and the portrayal of salt-of the-earth family members whose lives are gritty and tough. She treats her characters with compassion and doesn’t let herself off the hook as she searches for the truth. Her prose is beautiful, lyrical, and confident.
If you want to read or write memoir with heart and compassion, read Playing with Dynamite. If you want to understand how time and place influence the lives we live and the legacies that follow, read this book. If you want to reclaim a lost family member and need a map to follow, read this book. If you want to take a journey that will make you laugh and cry as you glide along beautifully crafted sentences, read this book. In other words, just read this book.
October 11, 2017
Sharon finds herself embarassed to be left with only the word, "Wow", in response to her Uncle's revelations. That's how I feel about the book which just plowed into my day. Wow.
September 8, 2017
"Playing with Dynamite" may be a book about a woman reconstructing a relationship with her deceased father, but like the best examples of the memoir genre, Harrigan vastly transcends what a one-line blurb can encapsulate. By piecing together the life, personality, and relationships that her father left behind in his early death (suddenly in a car accident when she was a child), she doesn't simply discover a lost parent. The life of a one-armed man who lost his limb while playing with dynamite lends no straight answers, a challenge that echoes Nick Flynn's father/son excavation in "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City," profiling a man as charming, funny, intelligent, and frustrating as Harrigan's father. The trauma of the loss, as well as the man's complicated and at times cruel legacy in life, rooted deep into the family's identity. By asking "where did I come from," Harrigan tugs at a thread that ripples to her immediate family members, her marriages, and her own children. The accidental powderkeg tears through the tinder of unspoken hurts, shallow-buried secrets and the maddening mystery of "what-if", creating a beautifully rendered story of family mythos. Her decision to claw straight into what is "better left unsaid" illustrates just how much the past can bring the present together, and stands as a testament to why we write memoir in the first place.
November 15, 2017
The nature of memory, the mythology we create around our parents, Michigan, France, New York, love and marriage, motherhood--PLAYING WITH DYNAMITE is about all of these things, but also so much more. This searching, honest, vulnerable memoir settled deep inside me as a I read it, prompting me to ask questions of my own life--and my own relationship to my parents--I'd never even considered. This is the kind of memoir that will increase your emotional IQ, making you smarter about your own life, and maybe even the familiar mystery of your own family.
June 21, 2018
When my father took my six-year-old sister on a trip to kill a deer, the deer killed him. They were still winding their way Up North, driving the four-hour trip from suburban Detroit to the country. In the pre-dawn fog, a buck ran into the middle of the road, the soft-top Jeep crashed, turned upside down, and crushed my father. My sister survived, and my mother was left to care for three small, bewildered children on her own. My brother was nine, I was seven. My father was thirty-two, my mother twenty-nine. The year was 1974.
This was the family story that Harrigan imagined and embraced, the story that so comforted her with its repetitions that it came to be the truth. Thus opens one of the most fascinating, honest explorations of memory and memoir in my experience.
The author's father lost his right hand and forearm in his teens, in an accident with dynamite. Many years later, on a day when Harrigan's teenaged son spoke of his reluctance to talk about his own father, she encouraged him to do so. Quietly he replied, "When are you going to talk about your father?" The question transformed in time into the journey Harrigan would take, beyond her childhood imaginations, to find her own father's true story.
"I always hated Father's Day. Did I need a holiday to remind me that I couldn't remember my father?" began the story Harrigan read to her peers at a 2013 writing residency program. Attendees gathered around her after the reading and talked enthusiastically, not about her story or even her father, but about their own fathers. This, of course, was the best possible outcome, she mused. Later, when she posted the story on her blog, a wellspring of conversation opened with her brother about their father. Further conversations with her other sibling and her mother evoked poignant contrasts as her sister was unable to talk about their father, while her mother easily responded to all Harrigan's questions.
Following her abundant harvest of new knowledge about her father, Harrigan realized that one more vital step remained: to makes a list of questions and take her own trip Up North to visit the aunt and uncle she hadn't seen in decades, who knew her dad intimately, and who rounded out the story for Harrigan.
Without condition, I recommend this five-star memoir (a finalist in the Sarton Women's Book Awards that honor women's lives), as a must-read for anyone seeking an excellent story, as well as a study of the intricacies of memory and memoir.
by Mary Jo Doig
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
June 21, 2018
When my father took my six-year-old sister on a trip to kill a deer, the deer killed him. They were still winding their way Up North, driving the four-hour trip from suburban Detroit to the country. In the pre-dawn fog, a buck ran into the middle of the road, the soft-top Jeep crashed, turned upside down, and crushed my father. My sister survived, and my mother was left to care for three small, bewildered children on her own. My brother was nine, I was seven. My father was thirty-two, my mother twenty-nine. The year was 1974.
This was the family story that Harrigan imagined and embraced, the story that so comforted her with its repetitions that it came to be the truth. Thus opens one of the most fascinating, honest explorations of memory and memoir in my experience.
The author's father lost his right hand and forearm in his teens, in an accident with dynamite. Many years later, on a day when Harrigan's teenaged son spoke of his reluctance to talk about his own father, she encouraged him to do so. Quietly he replied, "When are you going to talk about your father?" The question transformed in time into the journey Harrigan would take, beyond her childhood imaginations, to find her own father's true story.
"I always hated Father's Day. Did I need a holiday to remind me that I couldn't remember my father?" began the story Harrigan read to her peers at a 2013 writing residency program. Attendees gathered around her after the reading and talked enthusiastically, not about her story or even her father, but about their own fathers. This, of course, was the best possible outcome, she mused. Later, when she posted the story on her blog, a wellspring of conversation opened with her brother about their father. Further conversations with her other sibling and her mother evoked poignant contrasts as her sister was unable to talk about their father, while her mother easily responded to all Harrigan's questions.
Following her abundant harvest of new knowledge about her father, Harrigan realized that one more vital step remained: to makes a list of questions and take her own trip Up North to visit the aunt and uncle she hadn't seen in decades, who knew her dad intimately, and who rounded out the story for Harrigan.
Without condition, I recommend this five-star memoir (a finalist in the Sarton Women's Book Awards that honor women's lives), as a must-read for anyone seeking an excellent story, as well as a study of the intricacies of memory and memoir.
This was the family story that Harrigan imagined and embraced, the story that so comforted her with its repetitions that it came to be the truth. Thus opens one of the most fascinating, honest explorations of memory and memoir in my experience.
The author's father lost his right hand and forearm in his teens, in an accident with dynamite. Many years later, on a day when Harrigan's teenaged son spoke of his reluctance to talk about his own father, she encouraged him to do so. Quietly he replied, "When are you going to talk about your father?" The question transformed in time into the journey Harrigan would take, beyond her childhood imaginations, to find her own father's true story.
"I always hated Father's Day. Did I need a holiday to remind me that I couldn't remember my father?" began the story Harrigan read to her peers at a 2013 writing residency program. Attendees gathered around her after the reading and talked enthusiastically, not about her story or even her father, but about their own fathers. This, of course, was the best possible outcome, she mused. Later, when she posted the story on her blog, a wellspring of conversation opened with her brother about their father. Further conversations with her other sibling and her mother evoked poignant contrasts as her sister was unable to talk about their father, while her mother easily responded to all Harrigan's questions.
Following her abundant harvest of new knowledge about her father, Harrigan realized that one more vital step remained: to makes a list of questions and take her own trip Up North to visit the aunt and uncle she hadn't seen in decades, who knew her dad intimately, and who rounded out the story for Harrigan.
Without condition, I recommend this five-star memoir (a finalist in the Sarton Women's Book Awards that honor women's lives), as a must-read for anyone seeking an excellent story, as well as a study of the intricacies of memory and memoir.
June 19, 2018
How accurate are our childhood memories? What happens when family secrets are kept for decades?
Sharon Harrigan, in her journey to find answers, manages to heal herself, help her own children with their struggles, and write a deeply touching memoir.
At age 7 and one of 3 young siblings, Sharon loses her father in a car accident. As a teenager, her father was literally "playing with dynamite" and lost his right arm. Sharon fears she's playing with dynamite as she seeks the truth about her father's past, her parents' marriage and her own self discovery. She defines playing with dynamite as "digging up the past, exposing family secrets to the world. Writing this book."
At the beginning of the book, she says that when she does readings from her memoir, people approach her afterwards to talk about their own families instead of talking about her book. From the start, there was so much I could relate to as I grew up in the 60's and 70's. My father was also described as "a man of that time" and that "things were different back then."
Her writing is impassioned yet honest and will surely prompt readers to ask questions of their past before it's too late.
Sharon Harrigan, in her journey to find answers, manages to heal herself, help her own children with their struggles, and write a deeply touching memoir.
At age 7 and one of 3 young siblings, Sharon loses her father in a car accident. As a teenager, her father was literally "playing with dynamite" and lost his right arm. Sharon fears she's playing with dynamite as she seeks the truth about her father's past, her parents' marriage and her own self discovery. She defines playing with dynamite as "digging up the past, exposing family secrets to the world. Writing this book."
At the beginning of the book, she says that when she does readings from her memoir, people approach her afterwards to talk about their own families instead of talking about her book. From the start, there was so much I could relate to as I grew up in the 60's and 70's. My father was also described as "a man of that time" and that "things were different back then."
Her writing is impassioned yet honest and will surely prompt readers to ask questions of their past before it's too late.
September 8, 2017
Cautious. If there is one thing having a father who lost his hand to a stick of dynamite and later dies in a car crash teaches you, it's to be cautious. Cautious not to ask the wrong questions. Cautious not to upset your family. And to shrink away from attention as a preventive, cautious measure. Through the arc of the memoir, Harrigan grows as a character, away from caution, but still attracted to those who crave it - like her ex-husband. By the end she completes her Odyssey, finding ways to break free from caution toward a more authentic self, based in the truth of what happened to her father.
You can tell Harrigan began her writing career as a poet, because every word is chosen carefully and not a word is wasted. Harrigan is a master of the cathectic object, giving scrupulously described emotions to things as mundane as a deer or a billboard. Anyone who wonders if they truly know the truth of their childhood will identify with Harrigan's sincere struggle to reconcile reality with memory.
You can tell Harrigan began her writing career as a poet, because every word is chosen carefully and not a word is wasted. Harrigan is a master of the cathectic object, giving scrupulously described emotions to things as mundane as a deer or a billboard. Anyone who wonders if they truly know the truth of their childhood will identify with Harrigan's sincere struggle to reconcile reality with memory.
May 2, 2018
Sharon Harrigan's father died in an accident when she was in grade school. He was on his way to hunt deer, and a deer ran in front of his jeep, causing a wreck. That's what she believed.
But was it true?
I loved this memoir about the author's quest to know more about her father, to locate the real person in her hazy memories and her relatives' larger-than-life tales.
She beautifully evokes how absence and silence shape families, and how we can unintentionally repeat destructive patterns.
She also captures what it's like to be a smart kid from a poor place. Even when you achieve your dreams, you may struggle with impostor syndrome in your new world and regret that you've somehow abandoned those you grew up with.
Dynamite is a loving tribute to Michigan and all its beauty and struggles.
Highly recommended.
*I received a review copy of this book.
But was it true?
I loved this memoir about the author's quest to know more about her father, to locate the real person in her hazy memories and her relatives' larger-than-life tales.
She beautifully evokes how absence and silence shape families, and how we can unintentionally repeat destructive patterns.
She also captures what it's like to be a smart kid from a poor place. Even when you achieve your dreams, you may struggle with impostor syndrome in your new world and regret that you've somehow abandoned those you grew up with.
Dynamite is a loving tribute to Michigan and all its beauty and struggles.
Highly recommended.
*I received a review copy of this book.
October 23, 2017
Prompted by the burning curiosity about the father she barely knew, Sharon Harrigan takes us on a journey that leads to the unearthing/shattering of one family myth, only to be recreated into a stunning narrative—not just about her father—but also about, among other discoveries, the resilience and spirit she recognizes within herself. Playing with Dynamite is written with eloquence, grace and generosity. I highly recommend it!
November 27, 2017
Compelling memoir about the author's journey to understand the creation of the mythology she and other family members had built around her father and his early death. Highlights the way in which memory is fallible, often shaped by individual perspective, and can become collective. At heart, Harrigan explores the way in which we create stories about our family in order to form our own identities.
March 4, 2018
Why don’t we ask questions of family members? Because the answers might kill the stories we tell ourselves. Because the answers might blow up the images we’ve created. Because the answers might make us older and wiser.
Playing with Dynamite is Sharon Harrigan’s Odyssey to discover her father who died in a car accident when she was seven. During her journey, Sharon discovers new sides to her father and mother, other family members, and herself.
The answers will surprise.
Playing with Dynamite is Sharon Harrigan’s Odyssey to discover her father who died in a car accident when she was seven. During her journey, Sharon discovers new sides to her father and mother, other family members, and herself.
The answers will surprise.
March 20, 2022
On assumptions: Is dynamite inherently stolen, and are deer inherently good, by their nature? Or are these story tropes that we fall into, and is the truth rather different? Can a forest be alive but dead? A memoir about how we are drawn to remembered pasts we'd really rather leave behind and how we repeat the past but also make lives that are totally new.
September 9, 2017
From a single human quest to "find the father", Playing with Dynamite showed me what we all have in common. It opened a window into the world of a part of the US that I don't normally have access to.
November 10, 2017
Some interesting revelations spread thinly through an otherwise unremarkable memoir. Would have benefitted from a very thorough edit.
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July 25, 2018Sharon Harrigan's Playing with Dynamite: A Memoir is an engaging, complex book. It propels the reader through time as Harrigan tries to make sense of her father's untimely death, which occurred when she was seven years old. Harrigan's journey begins when, as an adult, she writes an essay that raises questions about her father's death and the accuracy of her memories. Digging into the past, Harrigan realizes that her memories do not necessarily match those of her siblings or her mother, and she comes to question what 'truth' really entails. The book will appeal to readers drawn to stories about complicated family dynamics, and it might make you look at your own family through a new lens. I know that since reading the memoir, I've been thinking about some of my own childhood memories, how 'true' those memories might actually be, and the role that memories of the past play in establishing our future.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews