Daddy’s Girl by Ben Burgess Junior is a good, fast read. I started it one Sunday afternoon and I couldn't stop until I had finished it. It didn't take all that long. The words seemed to flow from page to page and from chapter to chapter until I was at the end of the book. Most of them are very short chapters but all of them are very good. I remember reading The World According to Garp when I was younger. There was a discussion in that novel about why people read books and the conclusion was that people just want to find out what happens. That’s exactly why I couldn't stop reading Daddy’s Girl. I wanted to know what happens next. I wanted to know how things turned out for Nick, the somewhat optimistic dad who could use a little more common sense. I wanted to know what happens to his married Italian-American girlfriend, and finally I wanted to know what would happen to their daughter.

I have met a lot of these characters in real life. I lived in New York for a while with the family of an Italian-American friend. New York and its people are a special breed. There is just something about the people and the city that makes them stand apart. Ben Burgess Junior captures a part of that unique essence in this story of love and fatherhood changing a man’s life. Daddy’s Girl is a look at New York. It is a look at America. But mostly it’s a look at the power of love. A great look at modern urban life.

Daddy's Girl by Ben Burgess Jr is a heartwarming, beautifully crafted story that centers on fatherhood and what raising a daughter can do to a man, a story that daughters and fathers will love. Nick Johnson is a carpenter and an alcoholic, a man whose life doesn’t seem to have any sense of direction, a floater. One can say he lives for nothing, drowning himself in beer and wasting away in parties. But something happens that wakes him up. He has an affair with an unhappily married woman, Vicky, who gets pregnant by him. The birth of Lynn is the beginning of a new life for Nick, because he has to become responsible - no longer for his actions, but much more for the throbbing life within his daughter and he has to do it alone. What is it like to be a single father?

Single fathers are rarer than single mothers and it is interesting to read a story about a man’s struggle to raise a daughter all alone, a father’s love and connection with his daughter. Daddy’s Girl is a powerful testament to the incredible joy of fatherhood, but it is even more than that. It is a powerful song about life, love, and growing up, a story laced with many life lessons on love, perseverance, and the strength of purpose. Ben Burgess Jr is a good storyteller who knows how to absorb readers into his world view and send them back into life thinking about his characters. I loved everything about this book. From the moment Nick is woken up from stupor by Vicky’s words through a phone conversation, “I’m about to have this baby…” up to the brilliant finish, I was drawn in completely, fully captivated. I highly recommend this book as a fun and enlightening read. I couldn't put it down.