Parenting, The Bravest Act of All

I've always thought that having a child is one of the most courageous, optimistic things that a person can do. Think of it! To voluntarily accept the responsibility of raising another little being to adulthood while afflicting as little emotional or physical harm as possible. Can it even be done? Are most of us just one short phone call from the psychiatrist's couch? Or, are we amazingly resilient and adaptable?

Author Noah Hawley has written a deeply emotional yet remarkably understated novel, "The Good Father," about a man and his boy, about the lengths to which a father will go to discover what makes his son tick. If something has gone haywire in his son's brain then who is to blame? Is it the old nature v. nurture conundrum? Or is it something more fundamental?

You see, Dr. Paul Allen, contentedly watching the news as his wife makes the Friday night pizza, sees something that he can't believe and will never accept. In a crowded college auditorium, a young man with a gun has just shot the Democratic candidate for president. The face on the TV screen is remorseless, no, affectless, but recognizable. It's Paul's son, Daniel.

Within minutes the FBI is at the door. Paul's second wife and their kids watch, stupefied, as Paul is whisked away in a black SUV to an undisclosed interrogation location. The nightmare begins.

I found it especially fascinating to listen in on the Q and A with the authorities. Their questions and Paul's answers reveal how little Paul knows about Dan's life even though he was an ostensibly hands-on dad, taking custody of Dan after the divorce from his first wife and integrating him into the new family. Dan's little brothers looked up to him and Paul's wife did her very best to make Dan feel at home. The last anyone knew, Dan had been enrolled, though a mediocre student, at Vassar.

This novel reminded me of William Landay's super hit, "Defending Jacob," though it's a more cerebral version of the psychological thriller genre. Hawley writes with such empathy for all of the characters affected by the candidate's death, Dan's mother, his stepmother and brothers, letting us into the lives of the many other victims of the crime.

As Paul sets out to prove that his son could not have committed this heinous crime, tracking back and forth across the country, following Daniel's movements, he ruminates on some of the other senseless assassinations of the last decade, the Kennedy brothers, John Lennon, looking for answers that may never come. But know this, those shooters were someone's child.