Editorial Content for The Good Father
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Reviewer (text)
Although live television shows 20-year-old Daniel Allen shooting presidential frontrunner Jay Seagram, his father, Paul, grasps at straws and devotes the next year trying to prove Daniel’s innocence. Paul’s second wife and family suffer from this obsession, and he’s told, “You need to accept that this wasn’t your fault. That your son is lost to you.” Perhaps Paul attempts to overcompensate for not being in Daniel’s life by trying to stop the execution of a convicted killer. He tries to rewrite family history by focusing on its positive aspects. Read More
Teaser
Dr. Paul Allen's specialty is diagnosing patients with conflicting symptoms, patients other doctors have given up on. In the harrowing opening scene of this novel, Dr. Allen is home with his family when a televised news report announces that the Democratic candidate for president has been shot at a rally, and his son Daniel is caught on video as the assassin.
Promo
Dr. Paul Allen's specialty is diagnosing patients with conflicting symptoms, patients other doctors have given up on. In the harrowing opening scene of this novel, Dr. Allen is home with his family when a televised news report announces that the Democratic candidate for president has been shot at a rally, and his son Daniel is caught on video as the assassin.
About the Book
As the Chief of Rheumatology at Columbia Presbyterian, Dr. Paul Allen's specialty is diagnosing patients with conflicting symptoms, patients other doctors have given up on. He lives a contented life in Westport with his second wife and their twin sons --- hard won after a failed marriage earlier in his career that produced a son named Daniel. In the harrowing opening scene of this provocative and affecting novel, Dr. Allen is home with his family when a televised news report announces that the Democratic candidate for president has been shot at a rally, and Daniel is caught on video as the assassin.
Daniel Allen has always been a good kid --- a decent student, popular --- but, as a child of divorce, used to shuttling back and forth between parents, he is also something of a drifter. Which may be why, at the age of 19, he quietly drops out of Vassar and begins an aimless journey across the United States, during which he sheds his former skin and eventually even changes his name to Carter Allen Cash.
Told alternately from the point of view of the guilt-ridden, determined father and his meandering, ruminative son, THE GOOD FATHER is a powerfully emotional page-turner that keeps one guessing until the very end. This is an absorbing and honest novel about the responsibilities --- and limitations --- of being a parent and our capacity to provide our children with unconditional love in the face of an unthinkable situation.
