Misfires is a memoir about the unpredictable ways a life comes together when nobody gives you the instruction manual.
As the youngest of six in a big, blended family, Raymond A. Verrier, Jr. grew up navigating chaos, comedy, and the kind of character-building moments that only make sense decades later. His father's messages became an unexpected through-line. The emails he sent over many years were warm, coherent, and unmistakably his voice. In his final stretch, however, the texts became fragmented and disjointed, unfiltered signs of a mind in decline, heartbreaking in ways he never intended.
Drawing on those messages and on the memories they stirred, Misfires traces a childhood and adulthood shaped by small disasters, unexpected grace, and the strange humor that emerges even in the hardest moments. The book moves from ER mishaps and teenage misadventures to the long, uneven unraveling of Parkinson's and dementia, told with clarity, compassion, and an unflinching eye for the absurd. It is a story about the people we love, the ones who wound us, and the versions of ourselves we are still trying to understand.
Both tender and darkly funny, Misfires explores:
• what families reveal and conceal
• how we inherit chaos without noticing
• why the past rarely behaves the way we want it to
• the unexpected moments of connection that alter everything
• the long, uneven work of figuring yourself out
At once deeply personal and universally relatable, Misfires is a memoir about survival in all its forms: the literal, the emotional, and the everyday kind that happens when you decide, finally, to make sense of the life you have been living.
