The Guy on the cover

While Bob Morris's book, "Assisted Loving: True Tales of Double Dating With My Dad" is about his father, the man pictured on the front isn't his dad.

It's a question Morris, and his publisher, get a lot.

"It's the grandfather of a younger friend of mine," Morris explains, a contemporary of his dad.

The man, too tan to be healthy, is sitting on the beach, eating a sandwich with both hands. He's wearing a gold chain and bracelet, and his gut is hanging over the top of his Burberry swim trunks. He looks as if he's about to say something taunting or outrageous, even with a mouthful of food.

"It was a choice I had to make," Morris says of the cover. "I think that the vitality and joy of that image of a man's face, the way he's taking life, that was the world of my dad. He could be any number of people in Palm Beach."

But his mom's sister, who's 85, was disappointed with the image.

And Dinah Lenney, who reviewed the book in the Los Angeles Times, took the publisher to task for it at the very beginning of her review: "What was HarperCollins thinking?" she writes. "An old guy, with a comb-over and a gut, sitting on a chaise at the beach - legs spread wide in his too-tight Burberry swim trunks-- skin like leather, gold chains at his neck and wrists, his mouth full of sandwich, this is supposed to be funny? Because, what, the real story isn't funny enough? They're going to sell more copies if they insinuate vulgarity between the covers?"

Lenny loves the book, hates the cover. And it's true - the book isn't as crass as its cover suggests.

It's tender and endearing, funny and insightful.

But Morris likes it.

"I love this guy, he's such a character, so himself. Exactly like my dad. It captures the joy, the essence of my father," he says.

Morris feels the cover is "antic and frantic, edgy. The goal is to say: 'This book is unafraid of putting it in your face.'

"This is a strange image," he admits. "But a lot of people say: 'I know this guy.'"

The book's received positive reviews and has great word-of-mouth, but some bookstores don't know what to do with it.

For some reason Borders Books, he moans, has placed the book in the selfhelp section in the back of the store, of all places. He's hoping that guy on the cover grabs readers' attention and entices them to buy the book.

But no matter what you think of the cover, what's inside is well-worth reading.