The Cut that Wouldn’t Heal: Finding My Father

Honest without oversharing, William Leith is such a perfect writer … A triumph’ Justin Webb ‘What might, in other hands, have been simply macabre becomes peculiarly mesmerising’ Craig Brown, The Mail on Sunday Ten seconds before my father’s death, I have a premonition – that the breath he is taking will be his last. It was only a graze caused by a dishwasher door, but the cut would not heal and infection took hold. Fifty days later, William Leith is standing by his father’s bedside, watching him disappear. William is no stranger to his father disappearing; his childhood was marked by his father’s absences, and as a consequence their relationship has always been a troubled one. Now, as his father is about to leave him for the last time, William reflects on the twists and turns of their shared history. Compelling, incisive, and told with searing honesty, The Cut that Wouldn’t Heal is about family and grief, and the pain of abandonment. It is about the way we let our loved ones down and the things we cannot say. It is about the act of disappearing – but also about how we might be able to reach out and find each other again. Eloquent and moving, The Cut that Wouldn’t Heal is a heartbreaking account of one man’s quest to find his father.