Father Figure

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Pub Date 25 Oct 2016 | Archive Date 31 Aug 2016

Description

Imagine a boy born in the last year of World War II to parents who before the war had become the darlings of their town. The father had been a four-letter man at the state university, an open and generous and engaging personality, and his spirited and beautiful bride had matched him stride for winning stride. The son knows his parents both through the legendary stories he has heard about them and, when the father returns from the Battle of the Bulge missing his left leg, as embittered post-war casualties. How to reconcile those two versions of his parents, and of his father especially? That is the subject matter of Father Figure—that quest and the lengths to which the son is willing to go to regain a father he never knew and the efforts of a sister and a past lover to save him before he goes too far.

Imagine a boy born in the last year of World War II to parents who before the war had become the darlings of their town. The father had been a four-letter man at the state university, an open and...


A Note From the Publisher

Lamar Herrin is the author of seven novels, including The Lies Boys Tell, House of the Deaf, and Fractures; a memoir, Romancing Spain; and numerous short stories, which have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review and Epoch, and elsewhere. He has won a NEA fellowship, an AWP Award for the Novel, and the Paris Review’s Aga Kahn award for fiction. He is a professor emeritus from Cornell University and with his wife, Amparo Ferri, divides his time between Ithaca, New York and Valencia, Spain.

Lamar Herrin is the author of seven novels, including The Lies Boys Tell, House of the Deaf, and Fractures; a memoir, Romancing Spain; and numerous short stories, which have appeared in The New...


Advance Praise

SELECTED PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF LAMAR HERRIN

“Here’s an environmental novel that does just what you want it to do: Frame an important contemporary debate in profoundly human terms…. Plenty of readers will enjoy Herrin’s book for its lustrous writing and poignant insight into the challenge of building a life worth living. But if you also want a novel that addresses a pressing political and environmental issue, “Fractures” is worth exploring.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“Herrin’s deeply contemplative examination of this contentious topic is less about the environmental fallout from an invasive destruction of the land and more about the emotional fragility of a family who feels all too deeply the loss of a way of life.”—Booklist, Starred Review

"Lamar Herrin redefines vengeance and innocence in House of the Deaf, a tale of political violence in which the life-blood of the spirit confronts the cold blood of the terrorist — a finely wrought novel of near-mystical dimension. "—William Kennedy

“The engrossing story, with its clipped, articulate style, lets us into the souls of a tormented family facing the loss of a child to violence, and it is done without sentimentality or mawkishness, building to a finale with grace and finely controlled tension.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“A work of unusual lyrical and moral beauty, of challenging metaphorical complexity.”—The New York Times Book Review

“…it is top-flight literature and if you lived through the ‘60’s it’ll tear your heart out.”The Los Angeles Times

“Short, audacious, and quite remarkable.”—American Heritage

“[An] extraordinary love story…Herrin has plotted this book like a suspenseful novel. It succeeds as a unique love story and as an evocation of Spain: its sweeping plateaus and fragrant orange orchards, its great regional foods and attentive formalities.”—The Louisville Courier-Journal

SELECTED PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF LAMAR HERRIN

“Here’s an environmental novel that does just what you want it to do: Frame an important contemporary debate in profoundly human terms…. Plenty of...


Marketing Plan

A portion of this novel, in somewhat different form, appeared in Epoch magazine, volume 47, 1998.

A portion of this novel, in somewhat different form, appeared in Epoch magazine, volume 47, 1998.


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9781942515531
PRICE $14.95 (USD)