The Patricide of George Benjamin Hill

A Novel

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Pub Date Jan 15 2019 | Archive Date Jan 15 2019

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Description

All their lives, the children of George Benjamin Hill have fought to escape the shadow of their father, a Dust-Bowl orphan, self-made millionaire in bedrock American capitalism (fast food and oil), and destroyer of two families on his way to financial success.

Now, they are approaching middle age and ruin: A failed ex-minor league ballplayer, divorced and mourning the death of his daughter in Miami; a self-proclaimed CIA veteran, off his meds and deciphering conspiracies in Manhattan; a Las Vegas showgirl turned old maid of The Strip, trying to stay clean; and an Alaskan bush pilot, twice un-indicted for manslaughter and recently thrown off his land by the federal government.

While their father takes his place at the center of a national scandal, these estranged siblings find themselves drawn from their four corners of the country, compelled along crowded interstates by resentment and confusion, converging on a 300-acre horse ranch outside Omaha for a final confrontation with the father they never had.

Migrating from the suburban anonymity of 1950s San Bernardino, to the frozen end of the world (Alaska circa 1976), and concluding in the background of one of the most horrifying moments in American history, The Patricide of George Benjamin Hill spans seventy years of life in America, from the Great Depression to the age of corporate greed and terrorism. It is a literary suspense novel about the decline and consequence of patriarchal society. It is also an intricate family saga of aspiration and betrayal.

All their lives, the children of George Benjamin Hill have fought to escape the shadow of their father, a Dust-Bowl orphan, self-made millionaire in bedrock American capitalism (fast food and oil)...


Advance Praise

"Rife with the mayhem attendant upon corruption and greed, and alight with the ersatz sparkle of American myth-making and self-absorption, The Patricide of George Benjamin Hill offers a hefty and concrete document of the often incalculable costs of capitalist success. With this epic entry into the vast field of feckless and appalling father figures, Charlesworth presents one of the most entertaining and utterly spell-binding arguments against the patriarchy ever written. Wild and haunted, it's a realistic book, yes, but maybe it's also a horror story in which the scariest monster of all goes by the alias 'Dad.'" –Kathleen Rooney, author of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk 

"The eponymous industrialist of James Charlesworth's debut novel is a bootstrapping striver, a paragon of ruthless certitude, a malevolent Forrest Gump of American capitalism; he's also the father of grown kids with wrecked lives and serious scores to settle. As Charlesworth tracks their murder-minded convergence on a Midwestern ranch, his winding, precise sentences excavate histories both personal and national to deliver a compressed epic that doubles as a fierce indictment of traditional masculinity. Rollicking, hallucinatory, and deeply felt, The Patricide of George Benjamin Hill is a scorching Oresteia for the twenty-first century." –Martin Seay, author of The Mirror Thief

"Rife with the mayhem attendant upon corruption and greed, and alight with the ersatz sparkle of American myth-making and self-absorption, The Patricide of George Benjamin Hill offers a hefty and...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781510731790
PRICE $24.99 (USD)
PAGES 320

Average rating from 6 members


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