Several contemporary novels for young adults highlight themes similar to those giving substance to This Stranger, My Father. Principally, these themes involve father-daughter relationships, family problems, the search for love, and finding oneself in a brand new world because of the occurrence of a critical event. Among these are: If You Need Me by Carole S. Adler, Ramona and Her Father by Beverley Cleary, Following the Mystery Man by Mary Downing Hahn, and Sweet Friday Island by Theodore Taylor.

In If You Need Me, thirteen-year-old Lyn finds her world threatened by her father's attraction to her friend Brian's mother. Lyn becomes incredibly worried as tension grows between her beloved stepmother and her father. Lyn's faith in her father becomes shattered as she becomes acquainted with a side of him she had not known before.

Stockard Channing narrates the story of Ramona and Her Father by Cleary...