A gritty literary crime novel, Cry Father follows Patterson Wells, a disaster-zone tree clearer navigating grief, addiction, and the legacy of violence in America’s forgotten corners. From the critically acclaimed author of Pike—nominated for France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Policière—Benjamin Whitmer delivers a haunting story of fathers, sons, and the cost of violence.
For Patterson Wells, disaster is the norm. Working alongside dangerous, desperate, itinerant men as a tree clearer in disaster zones, he’s still dealing with the loss of his young son. Writing letters to the boy offers some solace. The bottle gives more.
Upon a return trip to Colorado, Patterson stops to go fishing with an old acquaintance—only to find him in a meth-induced delirium and keeping a woman tied up in the bathtub. In the ensuing chain of events, which will test not only his future but his past, Patterson tries to do the right thing. Still, in the lives of those he knows, violence and justice have made of each other strange, intoxicating bedfellows. Hailed as “the next great American writer” (Frank Bill, author of Crimes in Southern Indiana), Whitmer has crafted a literary triumph that is by turns harrowing, darkly comic, and wise.
"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."
"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."
“Whitmer writes about the rustbelt of life. Showing the seedy, the dark, and the things that others are afraid to show.”
“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.”
