◦ Author of What Remains of a Father

Michael J. Tunney

Author of What Remains of a Father, a literary fiction novel about fatherhood, estrangement, and what remains when the relationships that shaped us begin to disappear. Dark and atmospheric without losing its warmth.

Published
What Remains of a Father

Literary fiction · family drama. Available now on Amazon.

02 — The book

What Remains
of a Father

A literary fiction novel about family, inheritance, and what’s left behind when the people who shaped us are gone — dark and atmospheric without losing its warmth.

Available October 15, 2026, with additional retailers to follow through Ingram distribution.

Where It Begins

A father and his children on a beach boardwalk the image the whole novel keeps circling back to.

Old photographs, calendars, half-finished letters  everything a life leaves behind, waiting to be read.

Family drama

Literary Fiction

A quiet, character-driven story about inheritance, memory, and the things families never quite say out loud.

A story about what fathers leave behind — spoken and unspoken.

03 — The essentials

Everything at a glance

Available worldwide
Why He Writes
No Easy Villains
He's drawn to stories without easy villains — love and resentment, memory and perspective, the things people say and the things they leave unsaid.
The Debut
What Remains of a Father
A father trying to understand the unraveling of his relationships with his children — Tunney gives readers a seat at the table rather than telling them what to believe.
Recurring Themes
What He Returns To
Grief and loss, isolation and belonging, and the small decisions that quietly alter a life — the best questions in fiction are the ones a novel doesn't fully answer.
Off the Page
Southwest Florida
Away from writing, Tunney works in underwriting and operations leadership in the life insurance industry — Gulf Coast sunsets, and probably too much attention paid to the Cubs, Cowboys, and St. Bonaventure basketball.
Get in touch
For press, events, publishers, or just to say hello.

04 — What to expect

What kind of
book this is

A closer look
Scroll to open the cover.
01

Literary, not academic

Serious craft, never a slog. Prose built to be read, not decoded.
02

Dark without despair

Atmospheric and honest about grief and family — never bleak for its own sake.
03

Restrained on purpose

No melodrama. The weight comes from what's left unsaid.
04

Family, examined closely

Inheritance, memory, and what parents leave their children — for better and worse.
05

Built to stay with you

The kind of ending that keeps working on you after the book is closed.
05 — About the Author

The person behind the page

06 — Get in touch

Join the story.

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