This Father’s Day, Bookends cheers to the fathers who do right by their families and are present for moulding the values of their children. For the bookish fathers among us, we recommend four books that celebrate good fathers.

Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barack Obama

In this iconic #1 New York Times best-selling memoir by the former president of the United States that the late Toni Morrison calls “quite extraordinary”, Obama lyrically, unsentimentally and compellingly ruminates on finding a workable meaning to his life as a black American. His search takes him to New York where he learns that his father, who he knows more as myth than man, has been killed in a car crash. This sudden death sparks an emotional odyssey tracing his roots by way of his white mother’s migration to Hawaii before sojourning to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family where he confronts the truth of his father’s mysterious life and reconciles his divided inheritance. The book has been deemed one of Essence’s 50 Most Impactful Black Books of the Past 50 Years.

Between the World and Me , by Ta-Nehisi Coates

In this profound work by a rising literary star who has, over the past few years, emerged as one of the biggest thought leaders on the state of race in America, Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding American history vis a vis their built empire on the idea of race, the exploitation of black bodies through slavery and segregation. Coates, in this book, which takes the form of a letter to his adolescent son, attempts to present his answers to the questions of what his place in the world is through a series of revelatory experiences meant to illuminate the past, confront the present, and offer a vision for the way forward.

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee

This perennial favourite and Pulitzer winner is cherished because, among other things, it tells a story of one father instilling values of honour and justice in his children. It has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide since its first print run in June 1960, when it was an instant hit. During the Great Depression in fictional Maycomb, Alabama, widowed lawyer Atticus Finch must defend a black man unfairly accused of the rape of a white woman. Atticus, despite much blowback and racially motivated aggression from what his overwhelmingly white community sees as his wrong-headed crusading, must risk everything in an attempt to get justice, showing rather than telling his children a valuable lesson about what it means to walk around in someone else’s shoes regardless of colour, class or creed. Oscar-winning film version (1962) stars Gregory Peck.

The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold

Narrated by a 14-year-old girl, Susie Salmon, who has been brutally murdered, one of the themes this 2002 novel examines the unconditional love a father has for his child. Dogged in his determination to expose someone he strongly suspects to be her killer, he will stop at nothing — through intuition and subliminal messages from Susie in an afterlife she calls heaven — to bring her killer to justice. Susie’s in-between world presents an interesting perspective on life after death, and the collapse of the family from grief is another heavy subject matter, but in author Sebold’s capable hands, the book manages to stay away from being overwrought and maudlin. Susie’s narration is gripping from the first line: “My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.” Film version (2009) stars Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Mark Wahlberg.