A Hero All His Life: Merlyn, Mickey Jr., David, and Dan Mantle

For the first time, Mickey Mantle's wife and sons tell their story about life with the great American hero. Mickey's own comments about his family and his personal problems are his last published words. A Hero All His Life is certain to be the most important and illuminating book about the man who was the golden boy of American sport. Offering readers a very personal perspective, this is a rich and candid story of Mickey's life as a national hero often separated from his family, and how they came together during Mantle's last year to fight against the cancer that took Mantle's life. Merlyn Mantle begins her story with the early days of her relationship with Mickey, through his baseball career, his alcoholism, and rampant infidelities. An unvarnished look at the events that led to their many separations, the death of their son Billy, and her own private anguish, Merlyn's story is interweaved with her son's accounts of their lives with an emotionally and physically absent father. His sons reflect on the peculiar difficulties of growing up with a father they loved and shared with an entire country, even as they desperately sought to gain his approval. In a unique and inspirational story of recovery, they also tell of their individual battles with alcoholism and recount how, with the help of the Betty Ford Clinic, they have overcome it. Heartbreaking, tender, and often humorous, this ultimately uplifting memoir tells the story of the unique American family of Mickey Mantle and the lives they led in the shadow of his greatness.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.