The good father
By: by Noah Hawley
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2012
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9781444730364; 9781444730388; 9781444730371
Subjects: Physicians; Fiction; Fathers and sons
Description: 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 nineteen, 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.
Table of contents: title: Dr Paul Allen is a highly respected rheumatologist living in a comfortable suburb with his second wife and their two young boys. And then one evening America is rocked by the shooting of a charismatic Presidential candidate and the young man arrested for the crime is Danny, the child of Allen's first marriage; title: news which sends the family down a harrowing path of no return. Almost overwhelmed by a vortex of feelings; title: guilt, anger, incredulity, love; title: Allen embarks on a mission to understand what happened and why. Following the trail of his son's fatal last journey across America, Allen's quest is both a suspenseful drama and a searing meditation on conspiracy theory, gun culture, marriage and parenthood.