Story summary for novel – In Our Fathers’ Wake
In Our Fathers' Wake is a novel about fathers and sons for sinners and seekers. Love and hate battle in the turbulent passage of values from one generation to the next starting with a reluctant mafia recruit in 1947 up to the climactic Santa Fe burning of Zozobra in 1987.
In Our Fathers' Wake invites the reader to partake in an odyssey of peril fated for two sets of fathers and sons born to vastly dissimilar lives. Their separate journeys converge, collide and compel readers to connect directly with the two main characters, Sal Testavita and TJ Stewart. The tests they encounter often befuddle the characters as a strange concoction of fate, will and serendipity. From within the maelstrom a plan emerges for both of them.
The story begins in 1947 when a troubled young father, Salvatore Testavita, faces his first murder victim. This killing propels him into a new life. Initially it appears as a strange bit of bad luck. A frenetic escape to a mountain hideaway in New Mexico places him on his new mission. There he finds dimensions of awareness previously alien to his Goombah life as he emerges in the Southwestern mountains as a revered truth-seeker to a new generation.
We rejoin him thirty-five years later when the son he was forced to abandon seeks revenge. Angelo Testavita has been reared by his ruthless mafia grandfather, Rocco Baccala. As Angelo wrestles in court for Sal’s worldly possessions, Sal befriends Thomas Jefferson (TJ) Stewart, the estranged son of Angelo's career mentor, CEO Nathan Stewart. The mix of fathers and sons proves fatally volatile.
Nathan Stewart resides in the pantheon of corporate CEO “heroes.” Angelo is Nathan Stuart's protégé at Universal Medical, Inc. In contrast to this duo, TJ becomes intrigued by Sal’s portrayal of a different way of life after hearing him deliver a university lecture on growth and spirituality. TJ faces bewildering personal and career setbacks, severed relations with his father, bankruptcy, the birth of a new son and divorce in rapid succession.
Significant chapters take place in a fantasy dimension warp (Ithaka) opened by Sal. First arriving telepathically at this wormhole of sorts, Sal visits with phantasms embodying the minds and spirits of men like Kant and Kierkegaard, Whitman and Darwin, Hegel and Heidegger. Their holographic personages exist in suspended states as they argue the merits of existence and God. Sal shares Ithaka with TJ alone. As the end nears, TJ and Sal leave Ithaka behind, each going onward to battle their real nemesis, a father and son of their own blood intent on killing them.
We are in our father's wake and passing this world to the next generation. Does a fiery end await the winners or the losers, the meek or the vainglorious? It makes for an intriguing, entertaining and, at times, humorous reading experience. The good guys survive and offer hope for the future.
In Our Fathers' Wake is a completed work of fiction. A publisher and/or agent has not been contracted with as yet.
|
|
|
