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    The Longest Trip Home
    The Longest Trip Home
    The Longest Trip Home
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Longest Trip Home

    Written by John Grogan

    Narrated by John Grogan

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    “As he did in Marley, Grogan makes readers feel they have a seat at the family dinner table….4 stars.”
    —People

     

    John Grogan, author of the phenomenal #1 New York Times bestseller, Marley & Me, once again takes readers into his past, his memories, and his heart in The Longest Trip Home—a funny and poignant memoir of faith, family, and identity. A New York Times bestseller in its own right, The Longest Trip Home has earned glowing accolades from the critics (“Genuinely heartrending,” —New York Times “Wry and witty,” —Washington Post; “Entertaining, funny, and, best of all, always honest at its core,” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch). And, just as Marley & Me was more than simply “a dog book,” John Grogan’s Longest Trip is much, much more than your typical story of a boy’s coming-of-age.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateOct 21, 2008
    ISBN9780061769436
    The Longest Trip Home
    Author

    John Grogan

    John Grogan is the author of the #1 international bestseller Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog, the bestselling middle-grade memoir Marley: A Dog Like No Other, and three #1 best-selling picture books: Bad Dog, Marley!, A Very Marley Christmas, and Marley Goes to School. John lives with his wife and their three children in the Pennsylvania countryside. John Grogan ha sido un premiado reportero gráfico y columnista por más de veinticinco años. Vive en Pensilvania con su esposa Jenny y sus tres hijos.

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    Reviews for The Longest Trip Home

    4.5/5

    27 ratings26 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I have to say I really enjoyed this book. Coming from a family with deep religious values myself, it was interesting to read how his faith permeated his life and his relationship with his parents. I was never sure where the book was going, but I enjoyed the ride and the author's humor. The ending was especially touching as the author recounts his experiences with aging parents. Audio version is read by the author.
    • 4/5
      I definitely enjoyed the first half of this book much more than the second. The stories from Grogan's childhood were far more interesting to me than his struggles with faith or the conflicts this caused between himself and his parents. A bit self-indulgent (there's really nothing all that special about his life story) and verbose at times, but not enough to make me want to stop listening. I almost cried at the end but the Catholic-guilt laden prose stopped me. On a more personal note, I CANNOT STAND THE SOUND OF JOHN GROGAN'S VOICE. GET SOMEONE ELSE TO READ THE AUDIO FOR GOODNESS SAKE!
    • 5/5
      I loved Marley and Me by Grogan, and while The Longest Trip Home took me longer to get into, once I did I enjoyed this book as well. Grogan recounts his childhood in a very Catholic home. His parents made sure that he and his siblings had a strong religious background, yet as an adult Grogan falls away from the church. This book explores Grogan's relationship with God and his family as he marries, has his own family and eventually watches his father pass away.
    • 5/5
      I loved Marley and Me because I am a dog person and have had many of the experiences John Grogan wrote about. Having grown up without the influence of religion, I was skeptical that I would find much to relate to or enjoy in The Longest Trip Home. Turns out The Longest Trip Home is a beautifully written book about the relationships between parents and their children. It’s about love, disappointment, and accepting people for who they are. None of these are action packed themes and this book's plot is far from fast paced, but Grogan draws you in and makes you feel like a member of his family until you care deeply what happens in the end. His writing style is so smooth and easy to read that you reach the end before you know it. You can expect to shed some tears, but you can expect to laugh a little too.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved Marley & Me so I jumped at the chance to read this book and I wasn't disappointed. John Grogan is an incredible writer with the gift of pulling the heartstrings. While reading this memoir it seemed as if I was constantly laughing, cringing with embarrassment for John or tearing up. I highly recommend this book to all readers of both fiction and non-fiction and it’s a must for anyone who read Marley & Me.
    • 4/5
      This is an enchanting story. I read Marley and Me and loved it, so I was happy to find that John Grogan had written another book. The Longest Trip Home is a simple story of a loving family. That alone makes it somewhat unique as so many of todays memoirs tell of abuse and neglect and love rarely enters in. Grogan has a sort of conversational way of writing that makes you feel as if the story being told is just for you. No pretense, no long tangents that leave you wondering why.. just good solid story. This book takes you from his very Catholic upbringing in a cozy sounding little town, to the moment that most defines us as adults. The death of a parent. He shares the good and the bad, although the bad is perhaps better described as the not so good. His life was fairly typical for the time. A little struggle with the rules, a little pot and memorable friends. I liked Grogan's own family when I read Marley, and This book tells the tale of how John became the man and the father he is today. Love and support being the backbone of his youth. There were no laugh out loud moments as there were in Marley and Me, but there were certainly smile and and nod with understanding moments all through. Oh, and there was of course, a dog.
    • 3/5
      Grogan, of Marley & Me fame, returns to his youth here. As a young boy born into a devout Catholic family, Grogan grows to question his faith. He struggles for acceptance from his parents, even as he separates from them as a man with little religious conventions. Sweet, funny, sad and touching, this memoir shows how love and opposing religions can co-exist.
    • 5/5
      An excellent story told so well!
    • 4/5
      John Grogan has done it again. He’s written a book that is sure to cause others to laugh and cry. I liked this book a wee bit less than Marley and Me, but not that much less. Grogan writes, not only about his life, but about common themes in everyone’s lives. The most notable theme, was his strict Catholic upbringing and the measures he took to finally separate from his parents and become his own person. There is much to laugh about, yet there is also much be serious about when religion has as firm a grasp on a family as Catholicism had on John Grogan’s. No matter the strife it caused during his formative years, the bottom line turned out to be that, within Grogan’s family, each member always had much respect for one another and their love for each other carried them shining through to the end. Get your hankies ready, readers.
    • 3/5
      Memoir about John Grogan being raised outside of Detroit in a very Catholic household and how he got into trouble, didn't practice his faith, and then relied on it later in life. OK book, in my opinion, not great.
    • 4/5
      "The Longest Trip Home"by John Grogan is really three books in one. The first book accurately and humorously describes growing up in a devout Catholic family. The second book realistically discusses the author's sometimes painful transition from being his parent's child to becoming his own person. The third, and I think the most powerful book, is the last one. It poignantly chronicles the aging of Mr. Grogan's parents and his relationship with them as they declined. Even though the author often did not agree with them, this section really honors his parents, their enduring marriage, and lifelong religious beliefs. I found this section very moving, and read it with a box of Kleenex nearby.I would enthusiastically recommend "The Longest Trip Home", especially for those readers (like myself) who have elderly parents.
    • 4/5
      John Grogan's second memoir shows that he can write a moving and often hilarious memoir that doesn't involve a dog. Of course, you didn't have to be a dog person to love Marley & Me...but it didn't hurt. At the same time, you don't have to have grown up Catholic to appreciate The Longest Trip Home...but again, it probably wouldn't hurt. I'm sure it contributed to my own appreciation of this book.The memoir is divided into three sections. "Growing Up" covers Grogan's childhood and high-school years. The youngest of four children, his family lived in a lakeside suburb near Pontiac, Michigan, in a house that his very devout Irish-Catholic parents chose for its proximity to the church. John and his siblings all attended the parish school, he and his brothers served as altar boys, and he even had an after-school job in the office of the church rectory. His parents were active in parish life, and the priests were frequent mealtime guests at the Grogan table. Aside from the church involvement, though, John's childhood stories will probably ring bells with anyone who grew up in the suburbs during the 1960's and '70's. The tone Grogan takes in sharing stories of boyhood adventures and stunts reminded me a bit of Jean Shepherd's in the tales that became A Christmas Story, and that's not a bad thing at all.John succeeded in convincing his parents to let him transfer to public school in the tenth grade. High school was where the seeds of his eventual career in journalism were planted, but it was also the time when he found himself beginning to shift away from his parents' church. As he moves into young adulthood in the second section of the book, "Breaking Away," he grows more comfortable with being less Catholic, except where his parents are concerned; he's unable to be honest with them about his doubts, even as they become even more fiercely Catholic with age. The strain becomes impossible to ignore once John and his future (non-Catholic) wife, Jenny, move in together before they're even engaged, and he can't keep that fact from his father and mother. As John and Jenny eventually marry and start a family of their own, he and his parents start realizing that their relationship is defined by certain "safe" topics and others that they have an unspoken agreement to avoid. The last portion of the book, "Coming Home," finds some of those walls breaking down again as the senior Grogans become incapacitated with age, and there are things that have to be talked about before time runs out - and those things include faith and prayer.John Grogan is a born storyteller with a conversational writing style, and I found myself laughing out loud in numerous places while reading The Longest Trip Home, particularly during the first two sections. The last section of the book is more reflective and emotional, and readers with aging parents may feel it keenly.Grogan's issues with the Catholic Church particularly resonated with me, because I have similar ones of my own (which I think will be the topic of a follow-up post). He seems to have made some peace with being a "nonpracticing Catholic," one who doesn't participate at all because there are aspects of the faith that he can't believe in, and yet continuing to identify himself as "Catholic" because of his upbringing. (I definitely relate to that - the stuff sticks.) He and his wife believe they can raise ethical, moral children outside of a religious framework, and are making their best effort to do so; I agree that it's possible. He comes to respect what his parents' faith, and their practice of it, means to them, even if he can't embrace it the way they do. I think anyone who questions the religion they grew up with can relate to this - Catholics in particular, but the generalities may strike a chord for those of other faiths as well. Grogan doesn't take on big philosophical questions here; he's strictly recounting his personal experiences, but sometimes that can be equally thought-provoking.
    • 5/5
      Grogan does not disappoint with his second book. The Longest Trip Home is everything you would expect from the man who captivated America. It is funny, poignant, reminiscent, & heart wrenching all at the same time.The Longest Trip Home tells about Grogan's life growing up with very devout Catholic parents. The Grogan's didn't take vacations to amusement parks or national landmarks. They visited Holy Shrines & locations where The Blessed Virgin was sighted. Grogan tells tale after tale of his upbringing. From his first confession :"There was only one thing I could do. "Forgive me Father, for I havesinned. This is my first confession."Then I lied my ass off."To skipping out on Mass & attending the Church of John & Tim. John shares with us his life growing up. And his slow separation from the Church that defined his childhood. He shares with us the strife that his defection caused between he & his parents. And how the Church even caused friction between his wife & his parents. But make no mistake, there is not a single bit of maliciousness about his feelings. The Longest Trip Home is not a "I Hate Catholicism" book. It is a book about his relationship with his parents. And how Catholicism played an integral part in that relationship. There are millions of "lapsed Catholics" out there. I guess you could say that I am included in that statistic. Our parents raised us to be "Good Catholics". To attend Mass every Sunday, to never miss a Holy Day. To pray the Rosary when times get tough. And we can relate to Grogan when he skips Mass, yet tells his parents that he goes weekly. Been there, done that.And like all children have to do, there comes a time when the roles become reversed & John & his siblings must care for their parents. Make arrangement & take care of them in ways that they were once taken care of. The Longest Trip Home is an amazing story. John Grogan knows how to tell the tales with the best of the Irish Men. He does not disappoint he readers with his efforts. If you grew up in a large Catholic family, The Longest Trip Home needs to go on your Christmas list. You will thank me later.
    • 5/5
      Wow! After coming to accept that people my age are now writing their memoirs (and have had enough life to come to some realizations worthy of a memoir), I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The family life, the schools, the issues of the time, are all fully and realistically described. The joy, the angst, the losses and the successes of growing up, of growing older, are wonderfully shared. This ranks as one of the most enjoyable and touching non-fiction books I've read in a long time. Thank you for sharing this journey with us, John Grogan!
    • 5/5
      The Longest Trip Home is another wonderful book by author John Grogan. John takes us through his idyllic childhood into his antics as a teenager. We see his struggles with his VERY Catholic parents over religion and his struggles within himself about religion. We see him emerge as a journalist working in newspapers all over the country. He meets the girl of his dreams and starts a family (with a dog!). And, of course, he becomes a best-selling author!Yes, the end of this book brought tears, as did his previous book, Marley and Me (which I loved). This book brought my own memories of growing up and my own struggles to become a person my parents would be proud of. Some parts made me smile, others made me thoughtful, and yes, some even made me cry. A lovely book about a loving family.
    • 4/5
      Well-known for his heartwarming and charming book about his mischievious, entertaining, and wholely unrepentant dog, Marley, in Marley and Me, Grogan has written an equally charming story about his childhood and coming of age as a son in The Longest Road Home.Growing up in suburban Detroit to devout Catholic parents, Grogan's memoir opens with his mother waking the four children for their summer vacation, driving to see a saint's shrine 7 hours away. This sort of religious devotion was a part and parcel of Grogan's idyllic childhood. He went to Catholic school, served as an altar boy, and attended Mass almost daily. But he was definitely not a sedate Catholic school boy, drinking the communion wine, trying to grow a marijuana plant in his garden, coming up with ways to torment the neighborhood's crotchety old man, and publishing an underground student newspaper among other boyish misdeeds. He chronicles high jinks and high spirits and his parents' unwavering faith in and unstinting loyalty to him, despite his "stretching" of the truth.Grogan doesn't shy away from admitting that he falls away from his parents' faith early and only maintains a facade for them because he doesn't want to disillusion them. As an adult, he starts to make more and more choices at odds with the Church's teachings and it is only through looking dispassionately at his choices and at why he has made them, despite his parents' disappointments, that he comes to a full sense of who he is and how he is still inextricably bound to his loving and forgiving family. While he may not have grown into the faithful Catholic they had hoped to raise, I feel certain that his parents were and are proud of the man he became.In some way, Grogan has written a memoir of every man. His mother and father are vividly and lovingly drawn. His rambunctious childhood reflects so many others' and highlights the best of a middle class Midwestern upbringing. There is a sweet poignancy in his chronicling, a hearkening back to a sweet and uncomplicated time. But there is a desperation as well, especially once the memoir moves into the realm of John's adulthood. The reader knows that his octogenarian father's advancing leukemia is dangerous and terrifying and that his parents' advancing ages, slowing down, and the scattering of his siblings and his childhood friends are all inevitable parts of his life.Beautifully written, this is a paean to a past childhood, to his parents' faithful religion, and to the coming of age of a son who is resigned to not being the man his parents envisioned but who is a good human being even so. Like Marley and Me, this is an accessible and charming memoir and readers will not regret an afternoon spent with the Grogan family.
    • 5/5
      This beautiful memoir celebrates the beauty of a perfectly ordinary life and is truly a love song to family and an ode to unconditional love. Grogan writes with clarity, insight, sensitivity, and great humor about the normal experiences and hiccups of growing up and breaking away, of becoming oneself despite fears of disappointing parents and failing to meet expectations. I laughed my way through most of the book and found tears rolling down my cheeks as I read the closing sections. This is an incredibly moving story that is a testament to the idea that all of our life stories deserve to be told.Full review at The Book Lady's Blog
    • 4/5
      The title had me thinking of John leaving his faith and then coming back to embrace it. Was I caught off guard. The book was about his life growing up and maturing into an adult. His passions and thoughts were reviewed and enjoyablely noted. Heartwarming and comical yet never made that crossover to real truth with his parents.
    • 4/5
      A touching and compelling memoir by the author of "Marley & Me", which I prefer somewhat, but this is pretty good. Grogan's life and upbringing parallel my own in many ways, which added resonance for me, and his father's decline and dying transpired with a firm dignity and love of family that struck me as a pretty decent way to go. Much about Grogan's father reminded me of my own Dad, now 82. We're not exactly touchy-feely either, and it would be nice to be able to do something about that the way I saw John Grogan and his father did as death came ever closer. Grogan has a knack with endings; I did not finish "Marley & Me" or this book dry-eyed.
    • 4/5
      There's hardly any mention of Marley in The Longest Trip Home. M&M was an autobiographical slice of Grogan's life - a 12 year period when he was newly married and started a family. In TLTH he goes Big Picture, and starts from the beginning until his father's death shortly before the publication of his blockbuster best seller. While M&M focuses on his wife and kids (and of course the crazy canine) this book looks largely back on his childhood friends, first girlfriends, his fiance Jenny again, but most particularly his parents. In fact, the overarching theme of this book is his lifelong struggle to reconcile his lack of religiosity with his parents steadfast Catholic faith. TLTH, as in M&M, seamlessly blends laugh out loud hilarity with poignant and sadder reflections on the pains of growing up, growing apart, and growing old. However, just as M&M was not by and large a sad book (though I spoke to several dog lovers who avoided reading it because they had heard it was) neither, as a whole, is TLTH. Ultimately, it is about the power of family and the love that can endure between parents and children despite the struggles and conflicts
    • 5/5
      Just like Johnny Grogan, I was one of those "good Catholic boys." I could relate to almost all of it - the first confession and communion, the stinging rulers and strict discipline of the teaching nuns (in my case the School Sisters of Notre Dame), the family rosary nights on our knees in the living room during Lent, the altar boy sacristy and sanctuary shenanigans, the confusing onset of puberty with its secret struggles with the sin of "self-abuse" and the half-truths of weekly confessions, and then, finally, as a young man, the guilt-wracked break from all of it. It's very obvious, with the publication of THE LONGEST TRIP HOME, that there's a lot more to John Grogan than that "dog book" which (justly) made him famous. Marley, that notorious "world's worst dog," barely merits a mention in this richly textured memoir of growing up Catholic and working middle class in a northern Detroit suburb. Like me, Grogan attended Catholic school for nine years. His years at the Our Lady of Refuge parish elementary school were mostly happy, with his childhood chums, Tommy, Rock, Sack and Doggy. But his transition to Brother Rice, a prestigious Catholic high school in another town was neither happy nor easy. After a year of this lonely exile, his parents - always perceptive when it most mattered - allowed Grogan to transfer back to West Bloomfield, the local high school where his friends had all gone. This was the beginning of his semi-stoner phase of adolescent rebellion, marked by brushes with local law enforcement and clashes with school officials. During this time he also learned to lie glibly to keep his parents happy. Yes, the good Catholic boy was learning to be bad. Grogan holds nothing back, he is painfully honest about everything in this book, which is precisely what makes it so good! He tells of his first high school kiss, a battle between tongues, lips and metal braces, which leaves him temporarily scarred - and made me laugh out loud. There are more such stories, of teen parties and lost virginity, of newfound popularity, of childhood friends drifting apart. But that's really all just in the first part of the book. The second part - college (CMU, where he cleans up his act and graduates with honors), work and finding true love - is equally honest in all the humor, heartbreak and pathos that is youth. But it is unquestionably the third part of the book that moved me the most. In it, Grogan struggles mightily to reconcile his differences with his still extremely religious parents, and finally, the wrenchingly sad portrayal of his father's final illness. There are a few stand-out scenes in this third, final portion of the book, although all of it is eloquently and heartbreakingly told. One is the evening that John gets out his camcorder and spends two hours interviewing and filming his father, hurting from the tortures of chemotherapy, as he talks about his life, some parts of which the son had never heard. "For two hours Dad talked as I recorded. He described the early blissful years of their marriage in a one-bedroom apartment in Detroit with a cardboard box for a dining-room table. He described their first house, on Pembroke Street in Detroit, and how he built a sandbox in their tiny backyard ... He filled me in on everything he could think of that came before the point where my own memories began. Then he said, 'I'm feeling a little tired now,' and I turned off the camera and watched him, cane in hand, slowly climb the stairs to his bedroom." Another hard scene to read is John sitting at his childhood home one night alone with his alzheimer-ravaged mother, his father in the hospital. It's just five days before Christmas. They talk idly of how there's no snow yet, but maybe soon. "That's when she began to sing. Soft and reedy, her weak voice carrying a certain warble, as if coming from a tiny bird or a little girl. 'I'm dreaming of a White Christmas ...' I marveled at my mother's mind. From what part of her far-away mind had the song surfaced? I had not heard her sing 'White Christmas' in decades ... Neither of us knew more than the first verse, so we sand it over again. Over and over. When she had sung all she wanted, she stopped and sighed. 'That Bing Crosby, heavens how he could sing,' she said, and then she was asleep in her chair, the silence again enveloping us." The third, and most unforgetttable scene for me was John Grogan's last one-sided conversation with his dying, nearly comatose father. This from a man who thought he had lost his faith, to a man for whom faith had been central to his life for nearly ninety years: "Dad ... Jesus is going to take you home today. In just a little while, he's going to take you." Reading this, my eyes filled with tears, I continued to read John Grogan's last words to his dad, telling how much he loved him. And I remembered, weeping, my last meeting with my own father, who was also dying of cancer. My family, like the Grogans, never found it easy to say, 'I love you.' So I didn't tell my dad that last time I saw him. How I wish I had. But I can't tell you how many times I have told him in the twenty years since then - in my head, in my heart: I love you, Dad. I miss you. You were the best. John Grogan seized that moment: "'Dad, you know how much I love you. I love you so much ... I know you love me too ... Dad, it has been an honor to be your son. I am so honored and so proud.' I swallowed hard, fighting to maintain composure. 'An honor.'..." All families are dysfunctional. The Grogan family, in spite of its perhaps extreme "Catholic-ness," was no different. But make no mistake. There was always love in this family. John Grogan never doubted that and demonstrates its in this loving memoir and family portrait. The book is completed, but Grogan is, I believe, still on a journey, making that "longest trip home." I hope he shares more of it with us.
    • 4/5
      In The Longest Trip Home, John Grogan maps his journey from his idyllic suburban childhood with his fiercely Catholic parents into his adulthood as a journalist attempting to reconcile his own worldview with his parents' faith. Grogan's childhood in suburban Detroit is the epitome of everything his Catholic parents didn't have in their own childhoods' and wished for their children to have. Their chosen neighborhood is full of green backyards, features a private beach of sorts shared by the whole neighborhood, and most importantly contains a Catholic school to educate their four children. Grogan's childhood is marked by his rebellions both small and large against his parents' rigidly held but well-intentioned Catholic morals. Though Grogan loves and respects his parents and sees them for the good people they are despite and perhaps because of their pious meddling, he can't seem to grasp their faith. Nonetheless, he paves over his indiscretions and lack of belief with lies big and small until, as he grows older and leaves for college, he realizes that he is living two lives in a desperate attempt not to disappoint the people he loves most. When the truth begins to come out, John and his parents will have to find away to cross the divide between his two lives.The Longest Trip Home is a finely wrought tale of growing up. Grogan's anecdotes of his childhood and teenage antics as well as his pleas to God to deliver him from the consequence of his comical missteps are laugh out loud funny. Much more profound, though, is his chronicle of growing up and beginning to understand his parents for who they are and to understand himself in what he cannot share with them. Even so, his story is filled with the love and respect he has for his parents both as a child under their discipline and as an adult who knows that he will never share the intense faith that pervades his parents' lives. Grogan's story comes full circle as he returns, with his brothers and sister, to sit at his father's death bed, and it is here that the book is at its most powerful. John's last moments with his father are rendered so poignantly that I found myself crying as if I knew them both personally. Grogan's memoir is a quiet but powerful tale of what would be an ordinary life and an ordinary family were they not made extraordinary by their great love and Grogan's exemplary writing.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this very much. It may be due to my Catholic school childhood less than 10 miles from the author's home, at the same time he was growing up there. I enjoyed the references to local places, and kept reading to see if I knew any of the people he mentioned.
    • 3/5
      This is the story of John Grogan and his life growing up in a devout catholic home and progress's with him through the years into adulthood and starting a family of his own. I waited to read Marley and Me until I finished this book which was great. There was a back story with a touch of Marley included in the book.I found there to be some very funny areas in this book and would recomend those that have read Marley and Me to enjoy this book as well. The author gives you the same feeling in this book as he did in Marley and Me.
    • 4/5
      The Longest Trip Home is a heartwarming and highly readable boy-next-door memoir about growing up Catholic in 1960s-70s suburban Detroit. It’s also about growing independent from family and away from faith, and, decades later, facing parental health declines.Simply written and straightforward in structure, the book’s appeal is its universality -- that every ordinary life is filled with interesting and meaningful moments. That said, Grogan sometimes seems to lose sight of the reader while the book segues into more of a Grogan family-history project than a memoir for public consumption. Still, his story is fun and touching and like mine in so many ways that I recommended this book to my siblings and cousins.
    • 4/5
      John Grogan, author of Marley and Me, has written a memoir of his life growing up in a suburb of Detroit. His parents raised their four children to be devout Catholics, but the kids weren't always cooperative. John probably skipped more masses than he attended. His mother's mode of home decor was 'Catholic church chic'--statues and pictures of Mary and Jesus and crucifixes were in every room. In addition to the humorous events in John's young life are poignant interchanges with each of his parents as he reaches his twenties and thirties. Many of us are getting to the age where we are becoming our parents' caretakers. Grogan opens his family's door and lets us see how deftly he handled that stage in his parents' lives.