Father of the Man: A Novel Horror Book Review

A stunning literary debut: a powerful love story informed by ghostly
demarcations between World War II and the Vietnam War.

It’s just after dawn, June 6, 1982: “Dutch” Potter, an upstate New York bus
driver and father of a soldier who’s been missing in action in Vietnam for twelve
years, snaps and dons his World War II army uniform, collects passengers aboard his BC Transit bus, then veers off route, careening into the woods of northern Pennsylvania, where he holds seven hostages to his one demand: return my son.

This wild ride, taking us from New York to Normandy to Southeast Asia by way of Dutch’s memories, hopes, and despair, is rendered in mesmerizingly lyrical prose-ranging in tone from bardic to barfly-and forms a brilliantly layered and nuanced narrative. As FBI helicopters whir and command centers are jerry-built, Dutch readies himself for an armed confrontation with federalauthorities, while his family and close-knit community are thrown into sudden and dramatic action. Father of the Man reveals itself to be a love story: not only between father and son, but between husband and wife, mother and child, the living and the dead.

Dutch Potter takes us, along with his hapless passengers, beyond the safe, the ordinary, to a heart of darkness.