About Father's Day
• Hardcover: 304 pages• Publisher: Harper (April 26, 2016)
“A strong voice full of poetic, timeless grace.”—San Francisco Examiner
When devastating news shatters the life of six-year-old Harvey, she finds herself in the care of a veteran social worker, Wanda, and alone in the world save for one relative she has never met—a disabled felon, haunted by a violent act he can’t escape. Moving between past and present, Father’s Day weaves together the story of Harvey’s childhood on Long Island and her life as a young woman in Paris. Written in raw, spare prose that personifies the characters, this remarkable novel is the journey of two people searching for a future in the ruin of their past. Father’s Day is a meditation on the quiet, sublime power of compassion and the beauty of simple, everyday things—a breakthrough work from one of our most gifted chroniclers of the human heart.
My Thoughts…
What a beautiful story.
Jason and Harvey’s lives could have ended up so incredibly different if
they had not have found each other.
Harvey is orphaned, Jason is her uncle and together they fit. As clueless as Jason is with raising her
he steps up, does the right thing, and makes her have the best life
possible. That could have gone so many
ways. So many bad ways.
Harvey is wise beyond her few years when she loses her
parents. She knows only what she has
been told and it hasn’t been all good about Uncle Jason, yet she knows that she
needs to be with him. I love how she
manipulated as only a child can do the system and Wanda to get put in the
custody of Jason. Then I love how Jason
stepped up and out of his comfort zone to care for her. I giggled, was concerned, and was beyond
thrilled with how they meshed together.
This is a two part story.
It bounces back and forth between the past and Harvey’s youth and the
present and her life as a young woman in a foreign country. I was impressed with how Harvey turned out
and how Jason has such a huge part in that life and her decisions. My only wish was that the different
timeframes were better labeled or given their own chapters. It was not overly confusing but there were a
few times that it took a few sentences for me to realize Harvey was a young
girl instead of a young woman.
Father’s Day is a touching, sweet story that held my
attention from the beginning to the end.
I definitely recommend picking up your copy today.
Purchase Links
I've found most of Van Booy's stories to be like this: very touching and sweet, and so very humanizing.
ReplyDeleteThank you for being on this tour!