Patriarch Run
Benjamin Dancer
Print Length: 314 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Old Man Press (March 19, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00J49L77S
After reading the sample on Amazon, I regret not taking the author up on the offer of a review copy, but when he first contacted me I was so overwhelmed with, well, life, that I just couldn’t take on another review request. I did, however, like the premise of his story and wanted to help him spread the word about this new release.
The first few pages of Patriarch Run introduce a story that is intriguing and a character that the reader will immediately care deeply about. At least this reader did. The book description reads:
PATRIARCH RUN is a thoughtful and character-driven, coming-of-age story. Think of it as Jason Bourne meets Good Will Hunting.
Billy discovers that his father might be a traitor, that he was deployed to safeguard the United States from a cyberattack on its military networks. After that mission, his father disappeared along with the Chinese technology he was ordered to steal–a weapon powerful enough to sabotage the digital infrastructure of the modern age and force the human population into collapse.
Against a backdrop of suspense, the novel explores the archetypal themes of fatherhood, rites of passage and self-acceptance through a set of characters that feel alive on the page.
That is considerably different from the typical book blurb, but it is attention getting. I really want to know who has that line of dialogue and what is going to happen.
In checking the book information on Amazon, I noted that many reviewers have had good things to say about the story and the writing:
What starts off as a typical “hero crawling out of a burning wreckage with no memory” opening turns into a rich, complex narrative about relationships, values, and sacrifice. The plot of Patriarch Run touches on the tangible, everyday subjects of loss, parenthood, coming-of-age, and self-acceptance against a backdrop of special ops forces, drug cartels, and exotic destinations, with a healthy dose of moral-dilemmas-upon-which-humanity’s-fate-hinges thrown in.
Other readers have referred to it as a “masterful work” and “A book of truly excellent quality.” If the rest of the book lives up to the standard set in the sample, I would have to agree, and I will definitely add this title to my list of books I want to read when things settle down for me.
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Benjamin will be my Wednesday’s Guest this week, so I do hope you will stop by and make him feel welcome. He has quite an interesting background, and I do admire folks who take a special interest in young people. He is an adviser at Jefferson County Open School where he has made a career out of mentoring young people as they come of age. He wrote the novels Patriarch Run, In Sight of the Sun and Fidelity. He also writes about parenting and education. Learn more at BenjaminDancer.com