Nathaniel Lachenmeyer's childhood memories of his father Charles are bitterly divided. The earliest and fondest ones are of his dad's gentle counsel during nightly walks with the dog. But as Nathaniel grew older, Charles, a promising sociology professor, became ill with paranoid schizophrenia. The boy was terrified by his father's delusions that CIA agents and Nathaniel's mother had "enslaved" his mind. Charles left home in 1981 when his son was 12.
Nathaniel was working as a comic-book writer in Manhattan in 1995 when police in Burlington, Vermont, found his father's body in a flophouse. "I didn't know he was in Vermont--and...