I re-aggravated a nagging calf injury this weekend, which means I’ll be spending the next 7-10 days on the elliptical trainer at the gym. My book of choice for the ordeal: “The Lost City of Z,” by The New Yorker writer, David Grann.

The work has been atop my personal queue for a while, and the writing is excellent.

Still, after spending the better part of the last decade admiring Grann as a writer, the preface to his book made me disrespect him as a guy.

The goal of the preface, of course, is to explain why an ordinary dude would even think to go and report a story in a remote part of the Amazon jungle from which few have returned, and go there for an indefinite amount of time. In the process, he reveals that he a) has a one-year-old son and b) took out a second life insurance policy before he left.

I’ve got a real problem with this.

For starters, I’m suspect of any dad who voluntarily puts life-altering work (read: work that requires extended time away) before family, even if it’s the story of a lifetime and the end result is phenomenal.

Second, I question dude’s judgment; while apologists (and Grann himself) might argue that the process of taking out extra life insurance ultimately had the kid in mind, why would any new father put his life (and his child’s right to have a father) in jeopardy for work (and again, voluntary work at that)?

It all seems pretty egotistical to me.

Plenty of amazing male writers (friends David Howard and Shawn Bean among them) have managed to write great books without risking their lives and abandoning their families for months on end. Why Grann had to go there, I just don’t get.

Of course on the surface, it seems the risks paid off. Grann got his story, the book is fantastic and it’s won all sorts of awards.

But we’ll never know how those months without a father affected that child, how months of life with a single parent shaped the baby’s life forever. At this point, for Grann and his family, these are things they can never quantify. I promise you: In my life, with L and her subsequent siblings, Powergirl and I won’t ever have to try.