Daddy dearest (well, not always)

PATRICIA ROBERTSON

THE FIRST MAN IN MY LIFEDaughters WriteAbout Their FathersEdited by Sandra MartinPenguin Canada, 252 pages, $24The First Man in My Life owes its genesis to a painful loss. When Globe and Mail writer and arts journalist Sandra Martin's father died suddenly in 2005, she reflected on their complex relationship and devised a book project to investigate the father-daughter bond. "In my grief, I found myself thinking about him and his life, trying to make sense of a pivotal and often contrary relationship. And that made me curious about other women and how they felt about their fathers - and whether they experienced unbidden revelatory moments, as I had done while helping to prepare a funereal collage of snapshots and other memorabilia."