Cry Father
A Book Club Recommendation!
Published on 16. September 2014
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-1-4767-3435-4 (ISBN)
Description
Violence is a spectre haunting men, moving from father to son and out rippling out through society. A disastrous run-in with a meth dealer reminds Patterson Wells of this fact, though in truth pain and loss are never really far from his mind.
For Patterson, disaster is the norm. Working rough trade as a tree cutter and power line clearer in disaster zones, he exists alongside dangerous, desperate itinerant men. Both the work and the men keep him from fully confronting the pain he fights to keep at bay -- the loss of his young son and the havoc it wreaked on his marriage. Writing letters to his boy gives him some solace; the bottle brings more.
Returning to Colorado after an extended period of being on the road working, he stops by an acquaintance's place to take him fishing. Finding the man in an amphetamine delirium--and finding the man's wife tied up and abused in the bathroom--Patterson frees inadvertently takes himself down a path of violence by trying to do the right thing. In short order, aligned with a drug trafficker called Junior, he'll have killed a man, been made to save Junior's father from his own son, and experienced the best and worst of his ex-wife's attempts to bring him back into society through lawsuits and love. For Patterson, the only quiet he gets is on the Colorado mesa, trying to live off the grid, but never really able to disconnect himself from the pain or the world around him.
In a tale about violence passed from father to son, we are confronted with one man's attempt to get back to himself.
For Patterson, disaster is the norm. Working rough trade as a tree cutter and power line clearer in disaster zones, he exists alongside dangerous, desperate itinerant men. Both the work and the men keep him from fully confronting the pain he fights to keep at bay -- the loss of his young son and the havoc it wreaked on his marriage. Writing letters to his boy gives him some solace; the bottle brings more.
Returning to Colorado after an extended period of being on the road working, he stops by an acquaintance's place to take him fishing. Finding the man in an amphetamine delirium--and finding the man's wife tied up and abused in the bathroom--Patterson frees inadvertently takes himself down a path of violence by trying to do the right thing. In short order, aligned with a drug trafficker called Junior, he'll have killed a man, been made to save Junior's father from his own son, and experienced the best and worst of his ex-wife's attempts to bring him back into society through lawsuits and love. For Patterson, the only quiet he gets is on the Colorado mesa, trying to live off the grid, but never really able to disconnect himself from the pain or the world around him.
In a tale about violence passed from father to son, we are confronted with one man's attempt to get back to himself.
Reviews / Votes
"Cry Father is strong medicine. It burns going down, but there's healing in that dose as well. It's a book that put me in the mind of my own Dad and made me think of my own duties as a father. And any book that can reach inside your heart and mind and force you to reflect on such things is doing something very, very right indeed." -- Craig Davidson, author of Rust and Bone and Cataract City "Whitmer writes about the rustbelt of life. Showing the seedy, the dark, and the things that others are afraid to show." -- Frank Bill, author of Crimes in Southern Indiana "Searing, spare, beautiful prose and characters who arrive on the page already well-worn. A pebble tossed into this novel reveals concentric waves of violence, guilt, culpability, shame, and vengeance - and yet when the surface settles, astonishingly, there is hope." -- Sophie Littlefield, author of Garden of Stones and The Missing Place "Since the death of Larry Brown there have been at least a dozen novelists touted as the heir to Brown's gritty throne. Needless to say, there have been few who've actually lived up to the promise. However, Benjamin Whitmer's stark debut [Pike] easily rivals Brown's most renowned novels." * Spinetingler Magazine * Benjamin Whitmer writes with fearless and savage veracity, beautiful and brutal in equal measure. -- Christa Faust, Author of Money Shot In prose both beautiful and raw...Whitmer presents an Americana too long off the mainstream literary grid. Brilliant. -- Charlie Stella, Author of Shakedown "Whitmer's bleak tale of dysfunctional father-son relationships contains some shockingly violent scenes, captures the seedy milieus of rundown mountain towns, and tallies the enormous cost of loving and losing." * Booklist * "Whitmer's deft descriptions of biker bars, greasy spoons and mean streets are as spot-on as his clear, clean appreciation of the high country where the 'peaks...look like earth torn out of the sky.'" * Kirkus Reviews * "Benjamin Whitmer's latest, Cry Father, is a gut punch of raw storytelling power. A novel of fathers and sons, and the constant-and at times emotionally crippling-mistakes both make. Much like Whitmer's first novel, it is absolutely uncompromising and one of 2014's must read novels." * Lit Reactor *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York, NY
United States
Publishing group
Simon & Schuster
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
481 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4767-3435-4 (9781476734354)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/2014
1st Edition
Gallery Books
€12.85
Available for download
Person
Benjamin Whitmer was born and raised on back-to-the-land communes and counterculture enclaves ranging from Southern Ohio to Upstate New York. Since then, he's been a factory grunt, a vacuum salesman, a convalescent, a high-school dropout, a graduate student, a semi-truck loader, an activist, a kitchen-table gunsmith, a squatter, a college professor, a dish washer, a technical writer, and a petty thief.