Skip to product information
1 of 1

Fjords Books

Fraternal Youth: Fatherhood Fails and Other Tales with Boy-Girl Twins

Fraternal Youth: Fatherhood Fails and Other Tales with Boy-Girl Twins

Regular price $19.99
Regular price Sale price $19.99
Sale Sold out
Shipping calculated at checkout.
Doom's overdone, so Darby shares hope and hard laughs.

Fraternal Youth is an experimental memoir with QR codes to videos and cultural artifacts such as:

- the dog fetching beer from the fridge (a COVID project)

- gladiator funboard challenges

- pop culture videos

- mom pranks

- gag reels

Fraternal Youth Cocktail:

5 parts fatherhood fails + the absurdity of life

4 parts goofy boy-girl twins + their crazy pets

3 parts adventure (Bonnaroo, Greece, hitchhiking)

2 parts peaceful parenting + simple discipline systems

1 part Headlines of Hope: a six-year hunt for tech, medical and energy breakthroughs + my comical spin

Praise for Fraternal Youth

⭐ "Mix Jim Gaffigan, Erma Bombeck and Pee Wee Herman into a Darby Smoothie. Add a dash of nonsense that makes perfect sense and you've got a compilation that spans from raising kids to raising hell. I'm an avid fan."

Wendy Parker, satirist for Overdrive Magazine

⭐ "Darby stunned me with this book. It's happy, funny, sad and weird - all the things that make up a life well lived, and he tells it with such beauty and momentum. So many chapters swept me away."

Ginger Cook, Humorist on Substack

Early Excerpts

I changed my first diaper on August 27, 2007. It smelled like fermented mothballs with a touch of failed dreams. I don't know where those subtle notes came from, but they were good reminders to use birth control.

2 years, 8 months old

Kids got in trouble at the store. Finn dropped a can of tinned pork on Melina's middle toe. The SPAM survived, but Momma no longer has a piggy that eats roast beef. The toe's still there, but it's a scarred vegetarian now.

3 years, 8 months

"Finn, didn't you say you'd drink your juice after dinner?"

"I didn't hear me say that."

4 years, 10 months

"Shhhh! I heard a sound make a noise." Fiona

5 years, 11 months

"Every time you go into war, you should go potty first." Finn



Author: Darby Jones
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Fjords Books
Published: 12/12/2025
Pages: 178
Weight: 0.62lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.48d
ISBN: 9798993976402
View full details