CRY FATHER - BENJAMIN WHITMER

I wish I were eloquent enough to put into words why I so love Benjamin Whitmer's writing. You may think it doesn't need explanation, but he doesn't write about nice things. Nary a fluffy bunny, rainbow, or warm chocolate chip cookie will you find between his covers, unless it's bloodied up, coked to the gills, or peed on. And we all know how pee can ruin a good cookie, am I right? Yet somehow Whitmer makes you want to binge on a whole damn box of pee cookies. Like I said, not near eloquent enough. 

I was wowed by Whitmer's first book, Pike (which you should go buy forthwith), and have been anxiously awaiting more ever since. Cry Father does not disappoint. I have a profound weakness for beautiful, lean prose and there are no wasted words here. Whitmer can draw a masterpiece with only a fraction of the crayon box. With the seemingly simplest of sentences, tiniest turn of phrase, something small becomes a chest-kicker. 

For example:

The idiot in the mirror in front of Patterson looks like he might disintegrate.

Cry Father is about many types of relationships, but those of fathers and sons in particular. The sins of the fathers have painted their sons' futures. The question is whether the sons have the will or the character to overcome the building blocks of their rough upbringings and tragedies in order to be better fathers and sons in their own right.

Patterson Wells works clearing disaster areas much of the year, yet he can't seem to clean up the disaster of his life, mired as he is in the grief of losing his young son, Justin, years ago. His ex-wife has tried to bring closure to her grief, both by raising her son Gabe from a brief post-Patterson relationship, and by suing the doctor whose mistake caused Justin's death. Patterson doesn't believe in closure, can barely look at Gabe, and can't conceive of a world without his son, keeping Justin's memory alive by writing to him in a ruled notebook:

Nothing ends, ever. And nothing heals because there's nothing to heal. Losing you is my life now. There's no resolution to it. 

Patterson returns to his cabin in the San Luis Valley of Colorado during the off-season, where he's off the grid, surrounded only by the mesa and his neighbor, Henry. On this particular trip home, Henry's son Junior is hanging around. Junior has no love lost for his old man, who was a cheating, neglectful alcoholic during Junior's childhood.

Junior runs drugs for the local baddies, and knows with every run he is further from being the father he wants to be to his daughter. Feeling unfit and guilty, he wants to wreak violence on his own failure of a father. After one of Junior's visits leaves Henry beaten and bloodied, Patterson calls on Junior to warn him off further brutality towards his father.

Instead, Patterson ends up getting pulled into Junior's orbit time and again, where it seems nothing goes right or ends well. Enter stage left: murder, biting, stoning, shooting, grave-digging, drug heavies, dog-kicking, ear-ripping, and butterfly kisses. Yeah, that last one was just to make sure you were paying attention. What results is a harsh ride, beautifully told. All that remains is to see what type of sons and fathers are standing at the end.

Street Sense:  I highly recommend both Cry Father and Pike, along with whatever Benjamin Whitmer writes next.

A Favorite Passage: "Turns out there's no better medicine for heartache than surviving a murder attempt and stealing a car."

Cover Nerd Says:  Cry Father's cover art blew my socks off. I would have picked this up off a bookstore table even if I didn't know what it was about or who the author was. Is it a picture of dirt (minerals? pollutants? some drugs mixed in?) on the ground, or is it something of a dirt explosion taking place above the Colorado mesa? The cover even has a slight texture to it, perhaps an inkling of the grittiness to continue inside. The font is a beauty as well. This will definitely be in the running for one of my top covers of 2014.