Jamie Lorente presents 'My Three Fathers: A Memoir'

Third Place Books welcomes Jamie Lorente for the launch of her memoir, My Three Fathers, which follows a ten-year journey of discovery as Jamie questions her choices in life and in men. She patches together the origins of those choices through reconnecting with her three fathers: her biological father, a Cuban exile; her Cherokee-Jewish stepfather; and later, her Iranian stepfather.

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My Three Fathers follows a ten-year journey of discovery as Jamie questions her choices in life and in men. She patches together the origins of those choices through reconnecting with her three fathers: her biological father, a Cuban exile, her Cherokee-Jewish stepfather, and later, her Iranian stepfather.

The story starts in girlhood and interweaves with her early marriage years—and the question of what led her to marry so young and to the wrong man. When she begins to get to know her biological father, a Cuban exile living on an old wooden yacht, she grapples with understanding her own identity in relationship to men, and ultimately, apart from men.

As she dismantles the mythologies she has held and carried most her life about her father, herself, and her relationship to and with men, she recognizes patterns she has recreated in her life, including a sense of loss and abandonment for her sons, even though all she ever wanted was to create a sense of stability for them that she never had. As she reconciles with each father, she learns eventually to open up, to soften her heart, and to advocate for herself.

Jamie Leigh Lorente is a Cuban-American writer, veteran, and advocate. She writes to reclaim the body and reframe the narrative of survival. Her work appears in My Teeth Don’t Chew on Shrapnel, NAILED Magazine, and Poetic Prosthesis: Trauma and Language in Contemporary Veterans’ Writing (Edinburgh University Press, 2022). She teaches writing at San Francisco Film School and facilitates veteran writing workshops in Portland. Her short documentary film My Body Is explores the healing power of poetry. The author splits her time between Eugene, Oregon and Santa Cruz, California.

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.