Book:Stray Son
Author: Richard Slota
Release date: September 27, 2016
Genre: Speculative Fiction, Family Saga
Publisher: Rainbowdash Publishers LLC
Available Formats: Kindle Ebook (273 pages)
I'd like to start off with a content warning: childhood sexual abuse and its associated mental trauma is at the core of this novel.
Richard Slota's Stray Son is a tale of incest and familial betrayal. It is an exploration of how unresolved issues can inform one's life and family relationships, and of the way the past has of refusing to let go until all of its unseemly contents are dragged into the sunlight to be dealt with.
In the year 2000, Patrick Jaworsky is a post-middle-aged, remarried Vietnam vet eking out a living by schlepping corpses for a funeral home. He's only marginally happy in his life, but he is comforted somewhat by his wife Lynn, his daughter Helen, and his adopted son Mike. Patrick is seeing a therapist to learn how to handle the incest his mother inflicted upon when he was a child; his coming to terms with that abuse is at the crux of this story.
Though the subject matter is quite serious and ventures into territory that makes the novel unsuitable for younger audiences, I found it to be a thrilling, enjoyable read. It veers from being a typical "mommy issues" tale in that Patrick's compulsion to deal with the damage done to him is initiated by the arrival of a shade bearing his father's youth--and that this spectre is no figment of the protagonist's guilt-ridden imagination but an actual time traveler from an earlier period in history.
On an otherwise unremarkable day Patrick Jaworsky begins to be followed by this young version of his father; the young man is somehow a ghost from the past even though the elderly version of the Sr. Jaworsky still lives. Thus begins a deeply intriguing tale featuring time travel, misplaced affection, dread, and finally, redemption.
I love that not only can his family see and interact with the "ghost" (though others often can't), Patrick also doesn't try very hard to hide the situation from them to begin with. Too many novels have the main character keeping strange happenings a secret for no good reason--something which I find baffling and irritating as a reader.
Make no mistake, this is no science fiction or fantasy novel. The method of time travel is neither displayed in any technical way nor really explained; regardless, I found the incidents where time is transversed to be believable. There were also a couple of odd occurrences which will leave the reader guessing about whether they were real or simply products of Patrick's tortured psyche. I usually like things a little more cut-and-dried than that, but in this case the elements integrated well with the story line and so were, in their own ways, appropriate. One such thing is the appearance of 1940's starlet Rita Hayworth. Galvanized by her close relationship to the Sr. Jaworsky, she makes a few appearances as a sort of mentor to Patrick and his father. Her presence adds an extra layer of mystery to this already slightly surreal tale.
Strangely, the Sr. Jaworsky in his younger guise was the character I ended up feeling the most affection for. Not that Patrick himself was in any way unlikable, but his father appealed to me in that he was a person of strong ethical character who was nobly struggling against all predictions to keep his dignity alive. As we know from Patrick's flashbacks of childhood, the guy was a right prick while raising his son, but when the father was a young bachelor--and before the destroying influence of Patrick's mother--the man was good-hearted and reliable (if a bit gruff). It is this version of him we are treated to in Stray Son.
A thing I found refreshing about Stray Son is that aside from the scenes recounting the actual acts of abuse, the author doesn't implement cut-away shots to avoid fully depicting the disturbing nature of some of the most frightening scenes. Slota trusts the reader to be able to handle this raw tableau of a family embroiled in moral and psychic disarray, and I'm impressed whenever I find a book where that sort of consideration for the fortitude of the audience has been made by the author.
Richard Slota's Stray Son is available at Amazon.com Author: Richard Slota
Release date: September 27, 2016
Genre: Speculative Fiction, Family Saga
Publisher: Rainbowdash Publishers LLC
Available Formats: Kindle Ebook (273 pages)
I'd like to start off with a content warning: childhood sexual abuse and its associated mental trauma is at the core of this novel.
Richard Slota's Stray Son is a tale of incest and familial betrayal. It is an exploration of how unresolved issues can inform one's life and family relationships, and of the way the past has of refusing to let go until all of its unseemly contents are dragged into the sunlight to be dealt with.
In the year 2000, Patrick Jaworsky is a post-middle-aged, remarried Vietnam vet eking out a living by schlepping corpses for a funeral home. He's only marginally happy in his life, but he is comforted somewhat by his wife Lynn, his daughter Helen, and his adopted son Mike. Patrick is seeing a therapist to learn how to handle the incest his mother inflicted upon when he was a child; his coming to terms with that abuse is at the crux of this story.
Though the subject matter is quite serious and ventures into territory that makes the novel unsuitable for younger audiences, I found it to be a thrilling, enjoyable read. It veers from being a typical "mommy issues" tale in that Patrick's compulsion to deal with the damage done to him is initiated by the arrival of a shade bearing his father's youth--and that this spectre is no figment of the protagonist's guilt-ridden imagination but an actual time traveler from an earlier period in history.
On an otherwise unremarkable day Patrick Jaworsky begins to be followed by this young version of his father; the young man is somehow a ghost from the past even though the elderly version of the Sr. Jaworsky still lives. Thus begins a deeply intriguing tale featuring time travel, misplaced affection, dread, and finally, redemption.
I love that not only can his family see and interact with the "ghost" (though others often can't), Patrick also doesn't try very hard to hide the situation from them to begin with. Too many novels have the main character keeping strange happenings a secret for no good reason--something which I find baffling and irritating as a reader.
Make no mistake, this is no science fiction or fantasy novel. The method of time travel is neither displayed in any technical way nor really explained; regardless, I found the incidents where time is transversed to be believable. There were also a couple of odd occurrences which will leave the reader guessing about whether they were real or simply products of Patrick's tortured psyche. I usually like things a little more cut-and-dried than that, but in this case the elements integrated well with the story line and so were, in their own ways, appropriate. One such thing is the appearance of 1940's starlet Rita Hayworth. Galvanized by her close relationship to the Sr. Jaworsky, she makes a few appearances as a sort of mentor to Patrick and his father. Her presence adds an extra layer of mystery to this already slightly surreal tale.
Strangely, the Sr. Jaworsky in his younger guise was the character I ended up feeling the most affection for. Not that Patrick himself was in any way unlikable, but his father appealed to me in that he was a person of strong ethical character who was nobly struggling against all predictions to keep his dignity alive. As we know from Patrick's flashbacks of childhood, the guy was a right prick while raising his son, but when the father was a young bachelor--and before the destroying influence of Patrick's mother--the man was good-hearted and reliable (if a bit gruff). It is this version of him we are treated to in Stray Son.
A thing I found refreshing about Stray Son is that aside from the scenes recounting the actual acts of abuse, the author doesn't implement cut-away shots to avoid fully depicting the disturbing nature of some of the most frightening scenes. Slota trusts the reader to be able to handle this raw tableau of a family embroiled in moral and psychic disarray, and I'm impressed whenever I find a book where that sort of consideration for the fortitude of the audience has been made by the author.
And check out an interview with Richard Slota on Authors Interviews here.
This review also appears on Goodreads.com and The Dog-Eared Dragon Facebook Page.
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